


Fraterfamilias

by Anarfea



Series: Laws of Men and Nature [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Character Death, Dark, Discussions of Suicide, Forced Masturbation, Ignored Safeword, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Mycroft Whump, Pining, Psychological Torture, Rape, Sex Work, Sherlock Holmes and Sex Work, Sibling Kissing, Sibling Rivalry, Torture, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Waterboarding, Watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:11:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 21
Words: 65,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2775914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarfea/pseuds/Anarfea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft unwittingly confesses a terrible secret and finds himself under Magnussen’s thumb.  He must escape before Sherlock suffers the same fate--or discovers Mycroft’s true pressure point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I: Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DemonicSymphony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonicSymphony/gifts), [jinglebell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinglebell/gifts).



> With a super heavy list of tags like this one, I feel some clarification is in order. Regarding the archive warnings: while I think they are all warranted, I would like to clarify that there is no violent rape of children. There _are_ graphic interrogation scenes, non-con, of both the forcible and coerced variety, and one chapter (which can be skipped without affecting the plot too much) which involves sexual tension but no actual sex between a mature teen and a significantly younger sibling. Only the last one is between Sherlock and Mycroft. 
> 
> Which brings me to the second thing I would like to clarify, which is the relationship tags. This fic is fundamentally about the Holmes brothers and their complicated dynamic, however Sherlock and Mycroft do not have sex at any point in this fic. I have nothing against holmescet, but this is not that kind of story. It does, however, feature a lot of Mycroft pining after or sexually obsessing over his younger brother, and a couple of scenes with marked sexual tension or what could be perceived as sexual physical contact, which is why I went ahead and tagged it Sherlock/Mycroft. And while there is no actual depiction of childhood incest/sexual abuse, the subject is discussed and contemplated in enough detail that this fic may be triggering for people sensitive on these subjects.
> 
> This story is about desire, specifically, desire so dark it is best never acted upon, and the lengths to which people will go to keep their most terrible secrets secret. I personally think it is important to draw a moral distinction between thoughts and actions; this fic explores where those lines are and what happens when they are crossed.
> 
> Thanks always to my usual betas, Prurient_curiosity, Alutiv, and 3littleowls (perhaps 3littleowls especially for supporting this fic in spite of discomfort with its subject matter). And thanks to all of the lovely folk in Antidiogenes for cheering me on, including my two new betas Redscuddery and beyonces_fiancee, and the two to whom this fic is dedicated.

February 9, 2011

4: 23 PM

 

Mycroft waited until a week after their initial interview before visiting Moriarty’s cell.  There was no point, really, in attempting to engage him before his methods had had the opportunity to take effect.  He’d read the reports and occasionally monitored film footage, but so far, the self-proclaimed Consultant Criminal had done nothing apart from recite his own, deranged versions of nursery rhymes and write ‘Sherlock’ all over the walls, even scratching it backwards into the one way glass with a diamond.  Mycroft had sacked the agent who’d been overseeing him when he’d obtained a permanent marker.  He would have sacked the one who processed his intake as well, except he suspected he’d smuggled the diamond in by eating it. So he had settled for ensuring that Jim’s food, water and sleep were all rationed and that he was kept in stress positions which were changed at random intervals for at least twelve hours a day and sometimes more than sixteen.

In between, there were interrogations, much like the one he was observing now.  He watched the video screens in the adjoining room as two of his agents worked Jim over, striking him across the face and body, only the cuffs fastening his wrists to the chair preventing him from falling to the metal floor.  Jim remained stoically silent, his dark eyes peering out from their bruised caves into the darkness.  Mycroft didn’t fault his people for their lack of progress.  He’d expected as much.  But the time, perhaps, was ripe for Mycroft to take the reins for a while.

“Uncuff him,” he said into the mic mounted to the ledge in front of the one way glass.  “Then give us the room.”

The agents stopped beating Jim as soon as the command reached their ear pieces, scowling as they opened Jim’s handcuffs.  Moriarty rubbed the bruises ringing his wrists, eyes tracking the agents as they filed out of the door.  Then he smiled, the corners of his cracked lips turning up, and closed his eyes.  His lashes fluttered briefly, and when he opened them, Mycroft had the impression that Jim was staring directly at him.  He knew that this was an illusion; Jim had simply deduced that someone had called off the agents and made a guess that whomever was in charge would be sitting just behind the one way glass.  The effect was still disconcerting.  A week’s worth of sweat and stubble and broken capillaries enhanced the underlying madness that always been visible in Jim’s countenance.  His smile was one of anticipation, rather than apprehension, and his eyes were bright with excitement, rather than fear.  Mycroft had the impression that Moriarty lived for moments like these, when his mind and nerves were occupied and he was the center of attention.  He made no distinction between spotlights and floodlights, between pleasure and pain.

The agents who had just exited the room moved aside from the door when they saw Mycroft.  He knew they would be there if he had need of them, but he preferred to speak with Jim alone, as there was no telling what he might say.  He smoothed his suit, reached for the heavy steel door, and let himself inside.

Jim looked up at him when he entered the cell, a feral gleam kindling in his eyes as they traversed Mycroft’s body.  “Hello, Ice Man.  I’ve been waiting for you.”

Mycroft grabbed Jim by the hair and pulled him up out of his chair, which clattered to the floor behind him.  He pushed it out of the way with his foot and marched Jim backwards, twisting one hand against his scalp and wrapping the other around his throat, and slammed him against the cinder block wall covered in his brother’s name.

Jim’s head snapped back against the concrete, and when he stood up again, his eyes were dilated.

Mycroft pressed down on his head and collar bone, forcing him to slide down the wall.  Jim seemed confused for a moment, trying to lean forward as though to kneel, but Mycroft held him tight.  “Sit,” he demanded.

Jim smiled as comprehension came over him, and slid down the concrete while edging his bare feet forward, until he had managed an approximation of a seated position, his thighs at a ninety degree angle with the wall, and his knees bent ninety degrees the other direction.  His bare feet were flat against the floor.

Mycroft let go of Jim’s throat and stepped back.  “Stay.”

“Good boy,” Jim smirked.  “I get the picture.”  His voice was all cockiness, but he licked his lips as he pressed his back against the wall, resting his palms on top of his thighs.

“Bond Air,” said Mycroft.  “Who was Irene’s MOD man?”

Jim rolled his shoulders.  The tension in his body was evident in his clenched abdominals.  “Albert Davidson.  But you know that.  Why are you asking?”

“To see if you knew I knew,” smirked Mycroft.  “You have another source, then, and not Davidson; that leak has been stopped.  Who?”

“Simon Andrews.”

“When did he approach you?”

“Three months ago.”

“What did he want?”

Jim’s forehead was shiny with sweat.  “The same thing you want.  Well, what you will want, anyway.”

Mycroft frowned.  He didn’t like the direction that this conversation was turning.  Whatever Jim though Mycroft might want, it was almost certainly to do with Sherlock.  He chose his words cautiously.  “Andrews’s younger sister, the one who went missing for a few weeks last year.  Was that your doing?”

Jim snorted.  “Hardly, you think I have time to spend kidnapping teenaged girls?”

“You seem to have located a body double for Miss Adler.”

Jim grinned.  “So I did.”

“You found Andrews’s sister at the same time, then.”

Jim clenched his hands into fists, banging his head against the concrete.  The tendons in his neck stood out from the strain.

“You would have needed to see photographs of Irene’s double naked.  So, pornographer.  The sort that exploits teenage runaways.”

“Don’t forget junkies,” Jim panted.

Mycroft pressed his lips together.  So, Jim had stumbled across Sherlock’s pornography catalog as well.  It didn’t surprise him.  “We found her quickly.  She wasn’t gone for very long, and appeared to be physically unharmed.  If something had happened to her, why wouldn’t he have come to me?”

Jim smirked.  “Because he’s a hypocrite.  He had a subscription to the site where he found the videos.  He couldn’t go to you with his information, or to law enforcement, without saying where he’d found them.”

“What did he ask for?”

“Names.”  Jim licked a bead of sweat from his upper lip.  His panting was becoming shallower.

“And did you give them to him?”

“I gave him the name of the director.  Low man on the totem pole.  Someone the distributor would consider expendable.  I didn’t want to damage our relationship.”

Mycroft filed that nugget away.  “What information did Andrews offer you in exchange?”

Jim laughed, a stunted, strangled sound.  “This is just a daily workout for me, Mycroft.  You’re going to have to do a lot more if you want me to tell you that.”

“I intend to.”

“We could speed things along, you know,” Jim crooned.  “I’d be more willing to answer your questions if you answered some of mine.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“You call this ‘working?’”

Mycroft kicked Jim’s feet out from under him.

He slid down the wall, slamming his coccyx against the floor.  He gasped.

“We’re done here.  I’ll leave you to reconsider the benefits of cooperating.”

Jim leaned his head against one of the many iterations of Sherlock’s name, still breathing heavily.  “I will if you will, Mycroft.  I won’t ask you to share any state secrets.  Just a few familial anecdotes.  Nothing indiscreet.  Nothing you’d feel uncomfortable with.”

Mycroft struggled to keep his composure upon hearing his own words used against him.  It was clear that Andrews wasn’t Jim’s only mole.  He resolved to terminate him immediately and set Anthea to work on uncovering anyone else who might have betrayed him.  He turned on his heel and strode towards the door.

“Send my love to Sherlock, Mycroft,” Jim called after him.

 


	2. Part I: Chapter Two

  
March 7, 2011

10:41 AM

Mycroft left his office and was surprised to encounter Gregory Lestrade in the anteroom with his receptionist. “Detective Inspector, I trust you got my care package down at the Yard? I wanted to thank you for looking after my brother and Dr Watson in Dartmoor. I’m afraid at the moment I haven’t the time to debrief; perhaps we can speak later?”

Lestrade blinked, looking distracted. “Yes, I did, thanks. It’s actually not why I’m here, though. I know you’re busy, but I suspect you will want to hear this now. It’s about …. Can we go to your office?”

Mycroft looked him up and down briefly. Lestrade's eyes were puffy from sleeplessness, his gait lacked it's usual swagger, and by the way he held his briefcase, he was carrying something he’d rather not be. “Of course.” He glanced at the receptionist. “Cancel my eleven o’clock.”

She nodded.

As soon as he closed the door behind them, Lestrade began to pace, declining the chair Mycroft offered him. “It’s about a case,” he said.

“And I take it Sherlock is somehow involved, or you would have gone to him instead of me.”

He nodded, and set the briefcase on Mycroft’s desk. “The actual homicide is open and shut, really. A business negotiation went sour and guns were drawn. I’m here because of something I found among the evidence.” He opened the briefcase and took out a slender file.

Mycroft felt a twinge low in his belly.

“The victim was, among other things, a pornographer. I found …”

“I know. You don’t have to say it.”

Lestrade’s brow furrowed.

“I’m aware of my brother’s erstwhile career, Inspector. Much as I attempt to look after him, Sherlock is a legal adult, even though he doesn’t always act like it, and there isn’t a lot even I can do about what’s floating around on the internet.  To be honest, I’m surprised this hasn’t come up before now.”

Lestrade licked his lips. “Mycroft, I’m pretty sure this isn't what you're thinking. It seemed like maybe some of the people in his films were trafficked.”

The twinge returned, deeper, this time. He found Jim’s words from the interrogation drifting back to him:

_The same thing you want. Well, what you will want, anyway._

Moriarty had clearly arranged for Mycroft to find this particular film now. He somehow intended to use it for leverage.

Lestrade shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I hesitated to bring this to you. You know that I’m on thin ice with the Commissioner because of all the times I’ve bent the rules for Sherlock. But I just kept … There were so many photos, a bunch of them were just your run of the mill sort of stuff, but there were … other things, too, and these were with them. They were all on a laptop we confiscated in a folder marked ‘unpublishable.’ Seems even they had some scruples, or they were afraid of attracting the law, I suppose.

“Anyway, we were going through the images looking for locations, whatever, and there isn’t much, and I recognized Sherlock. I don’t think anyone else did. Most people don’t remember what he was like back then.”

He scratched his nape, ruffling his silver hair. “We don’t have the resources to investigate them all, but I thought that you might, and that you might want to. If it were my brother--that is, if I had a brother …” He sighed. “Look, I’m not normally happy when your lot takes cases away from us and disappears the suspects instead of letting justice take its course, but this might be the exception.” He set the folder on Mycroft’s desk. “There was a film as well. I didn’t watch it. I copied it and all the photos onto a USB drive in the bottom of the envelope. Everything we know about the victim is in that file. I’ll be needing it back, of course. The thumb drive you can keep, if it’s helpful.”

“Thank you.” Mycroft met Lestrade’s troubled eyes. “I appreciate you looking out for him. He won’t ever say it, but Sherlock does, as well.”

“I try, anyway.” He closed the briefcase again. “I’ve got to run. On my lunch at the moment.”

“I’ll make sure the files are returned by this evening,” promised Mycroft.

“I suppose I don’t want to know how you’ll arrange that.”

He forced a smile. “Perhaps it’s best you don’t.”

“Right. I hope it’s enough.” He squared his shoulders and turned towards the door.

Mycroft stood up.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Lestrade, and saw himself out.

Mycroft sat back down at his desk, palms folded under his chin. Clearly, Jim meant to unnerve him. If he watched the film, he was giving Moriarty what he wanted. On the other hand, if what Lestrade had said was true, he might need to intervene and take action on behalf of his brother, and he’d be a fool if he ignored any evidence that could help him with the Andrews case.

He dialed his receptionist. “Clear my schedule,” he said. “And have lunch sent to my office.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Mycroft hung up, switched to the secure line, and dialed Anthea.

“How can I help?” she asked.

“I’ll be visiting Moriarty again tonight. Please make arrangements.”

“Consider it done.”

Mycroft hung up his phone, then gingerly opened the file. He looked at the crime scene photos first. He’d never understood Sherlock’s fascination for these; most of the deductions were child’s play. The case seemed not as open and shut as Lestrade had implied. A quick glance at the bullet holes indicated what the Met had determined was a business meeting gone badly was clearly staged; this was a hit made to look like a firefight, and it had Moriarty’s filthy fingerprints all over it.

He picked up the thumb drive, turning it over in his palm. If it was as bad as Lestrade had implied, he would no doubt need to locate the computer the Met had in their evidence locker and make sure the originals were removed. He plugged it into his personal laptop and brought up the files.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was a fun update. I meant to post earlier but I'm on vacation and neglected to pack a keyboard so this update is courtesy of my phone. I'll try to update weekly on either Mondays or Thursdays from here on out.


	3. Part I: Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for following along. It looks like Monday is going to be Update Day. Note that this chapter contains graphic torture. I've done my best to balance portraying this medically accurately with the extraordinary pain tolerance attributed to Jim in canon. I'm not a medical professional however, and apologize for any inaccuracies.

March 7, 2011

10: 23 PM

 

Jim was seated in the corner of his cell, rocking back and forth and muttering under his breath.  “William Sherlock sat on a wall.  William Sherlock had a great fall.  All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Mycroft together again.”  He looked up when Mycroft walked into the room, then at the men on either side of him.  “Oh,” he licked his lips.  “You found it.”

Mycroft’s muscle grabbed each of Jim’s arms and hauled him to his feet, dragging him from the cell.  He refused to walk, making it as difficult for them as possible.  They pulled him down the hallway, the tops of his feet scraping across the floor, through the doorway across the hall.  Jim suddenly brought his feet under him and stood straight, cocking his head to the side as he assessed the inclined plank in front of him and the drain in the floor underneath.  A blood oxygen monitor and a crash trolley stood in one corner.  A stainless steel chair sat to the side of the plank.

Jim made no attempt to struggle as Mycroft’s men walked him to the board, shoved him down onto his back, and strapped his arms and legs in place, elevating his feet above his head.  One of them fitted the oxygen monitor to his finger as another tightened the strap across his chest.  He flexed his muscles, seeming more to test the bonds than to try to escape, and, apparently satisfied, wriggled against the wood as though scratching his back.  He cocked his neck to the side, cracking it, met Mycroft’s gaze, and smiled.  His eyes were even more sunken than before, and the pupils had dilated until his irises were almost eclipsed.  Mycroft had the sudden impression he was staring into a pair of dry inkwells.

“Leave us.”

The two guards eyed each other for a split second before turning towards the door.

“And turn off the feed.”

“Ooh,” Jim crooned.  “Off the record.”

They left quietly, leaving Mycroft standing in the room with James Moriarty and a hose.  He removed his jacket deliberately, draping it over the back of the empty chair, and unfastened his cuff links, tucking them into his waistcoat pocket.  He rolled back his cuffs and secured them above his elbows with sleeve garters.  Finally, he selected a white towel from a pile in the corner.  Jim grinned as Mycroft dropped it across his face.

Moriarty parted his lips, sucking the cloth towards him.  Mycroft adjusted the spray nozzle on the hose to low, and pulled the trigger, aiming the stream of icy water into Jim’s open mouth.  Jim let out his breath slowly through his nose, bubbles rippling the soaked towel.  The usual was fifteen seconds on, fifteen seconds off. Mycroft kept the hose on Jim until he ran out of breath, watched as he struggled against his binds and the animal instinct to breathe.  He inhaled with a sucking sound, water flooding his larynx, trachea, and sinuses.  The angle of his body would keep his lungs above the waterline.

Mycroft switched the nozzle off and pulled the soaked towel from Jim’s face.

Jim sputtered and coughed, struggling to clear his airway.

“Why now?” Mycroft asked.

He coughed again, blinking water out of his eyes.  “Whatever do you mean?”

Mycroft dropped the soaked cloth back over Jim’s face and turned the hose on again.  Thirty seconds on, fifteen seconds off.  It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘rinse and repeat.’  With most people, what broke them was the fear that they would drown.  With Jim, Mycroft was more concerned that he might actually try to inhale water and asphyxiate himself.  His men had discovered fairly early on that he couldn’t be made to tiptoe by putting his neck through a noose, for example.  He had been perfectly content to choke until he blacked out and a medic needed to be summoned.  Mycroft watched the oxygen monitor on Jim’s forefinger carefully, letting him breathe whenever he dipped towards hypoxia, though of course, it was the build up of carbon dioxide in his lungs that caused the burning discomfort.

He removed the towel when Jim switched from wheezing to gurgling, bubbles coming up from his lips.  Mycroft slapped him.  He didn’t normally get this physical.  Sentiment was clouding his judgement.  “Are you finished playing games?” he asked.

Jim tilted his face into his hand.  “I thought we were just getting started, Daddy.  Or should I say, Big Brother?”

Mycroft put the towel over Jim’s face again, holding his hand tight over his mouth as he sprayed water into his nose, using his palm to keep Jim from coughing the water out.  Jim thrashed beneath him; the neoprene straps on his arms and chest layered bands of purple bruises over the mottled green and yellow marks of previous beatings.  Mycroft waited until the oxygen monitor began to beep in warning before removing the towel.

“Why now?” Mycroft asked again.  “The metadata from the film says it was shot in 1998.  Why hold on to it for more than ten years?”

Jim hacked up pink-tinged water. Blood seeped from his nose.  “The producer was useful.  Paid well.  Kept eastern Europe interesting.  You might say he was a favourite of mine.  So, after the video aired--and it was a limited release, streamed live to a somewhat exclusive audience--I suggested, consultant to client, that he might want not want to edit that particular film into something more like conventional BDSM porn and put it on one of his other sites, as was his MO.”

“He’d already done it.”  The version Mycroft had seen had obviously been edited together from multiple camera angles.

“Yes, but it was never published.”  Jim licked his lips.  “I preferred the uncut footage, myself.”

Mycroft sprayed the hose straight into his face without putting the cloth down.  Jim snorted water into his bleeding nose.  He kicked his bare heels against the board; they were scraped raw from the rough wood.

“Give me a name,” Mycroft demanded.

Jim laughed.

Mycroft waited forty seconds and turned the water off again.  The oxygen monitor blared--an annoying, high pitched klaxon.  Mycroft rolled his eyes and pulled the cloth from his face.  Jim choked up water, and the alarm calmed to a steady beeping.  He stood back and let him breathe, though he did spray water into Jim’s eyes whenever he tried to blink them open.  

“You said he _was_ a favourite.  What happened?”

Jim’s choked out the words between bouts of coughing.  “His business partner got skittish when I started cutting clients loose to feed to Sherlock.  Wanted to see another consultant.”

“And you thought I would do your dirty work and eliminate him for you?”

Jim raised his eyebrows.  “Won’t you?”

“You don’t actually want me to.  If you did, you’d give me a name.”

Jim grinned.  “We both know I could do this as many times as you dare to, for as long as your handlers will let you keep me.  You’re running out of time.  I’ll give you your name, Ice Man, but you have to give me something.  Quid pro quo.  Tit for tat.  You killed my dog; I”ll kill your cat.”  He giggled.

Mycroft slapped him again, more from annoyance than anything else.  Jim tilted his face into his palm, darting his tongue out to lick Mycroft’s wrist.  He snatched his hand back and turned the hose on Jim, adjusting the nozzle for a wider spray that soaked his whole body.  His thin white t-shirt clung to the muscles of his chest.

Mycroft adjusted the thermostat (well below room temperature but still above freezing) rolled his sleeves down, and put his cuff links back.  Then he removed his jacket from the chair, put it back on, and sat with his legs folded into a numeral four position.  He kept one hand palm down on his thigh, and the hose nozzle ready in the other.

He waited for the AC to drive the heat from the room, for Jim’s shivers to ratchet up until they became near to full body convulsions.  He shivered himself, though he did his best to keep his body quiet.  The fingers curled around the hose nozzle were becoming numb.  He longed for a cigarette.  Moriarty had gone quiet but for occasional paroxysms of coughing.  He would have to see that the man was monitored for any symptoms of pneumonia, after.

After nearly thirty minutes, during which Mycroft practiced the Method of Loci, filing away all the memories of Jim’s earlier words and gestures into organized files inside his brain, he broke the silence.  “What do you want to know?”

Elation flitted over Jim’s face as he surfaced from wherever he’d sunk within his own mind.  “Was Sherlock a beautiful child?”  He licked his lips.  “He has a mouth like an angel’s.  With those curls he must have been a Botticelli cherub.”

Sherlock had been radiant even as an infant, born with dark hair, drawing enthusiastic cooing from passers by who fawned over his silver eyes and long lashes.  He’d become even more magnetic as a toddler, and had been adored by everyone until he’d begun to talk.  “He was whiney and sniveling, as most children are.  More goblin than cupid.”

Jim smiled, closing his eyes.  “You were jealous, then.  Mummy loved him more than you.”

Mycroft let his lips curl into a form he had perfected, something at once a smile and a sneer.  “Who’s the distributor, Jim?”

He chuckled.  “You’re a hypocrite, just like Andrews.  Asking me for a name.  What you want is the uncut video.”  Jim turned his sweat and water sheened face towards Mycroft.  His eyes were bloodshot from sleep deprivation and dehydration.  “When did it start?  Did you slip into his bed at night?  Did you spoon him and rub your prick against his arse through your pyjamas?”

Mycroft sprayed the hose into Jim’s face, standing up out of the chair.  He kept the water going, ignoring the monitor, until Jim began to seize.  He must have inhaled.  Most likely, the laryngeal cords would spasm and close off his airway, minimizing the entry of water into his lungs, but he could still dry drown.  Mycroft threw the hose to the floor, made for the crash trolley, and pulled open the first drawer, snatching up an oxygen wrench and mask.  He picked up the tank and regulator hanging from the side of the trolley and started the flow with the wrench, adjusting to the rate while Jim thrashed against the plank, coughing up blood and water.  Mycroft set the tank next to Jim, held his forehead down, and pushed the mask over his mouth and nose.  Jim gasped, sucking in great gulps of pure oxygen.  Mycroft held the mask over his face until his flailing subsided, then hooked the straps behind his head and returned to the trolley for a stethoscope.

He placed the earpieces in his ears and the metal diaphragm on Jim’s chest, checking for breath sounds.  They were absent on the left side.  Probably the lung had collapsed from the prolonged oxygen deprivation.  A minor pneumothorax would no doubt cause Jim a great deal of discomfort while breathing, possibly for weeks, but would most likely resolve on its own.  It did, however, make continuing to waterboard him inadvisable.

Jim opened his eyes, smiling from behind the oxygen mask.  “You rather showed your hand there, brother mine.”  His voice was distorted by the plastic.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”  Mycroft sniffed.  “I never touched Sherlock.  Certainly not when he was a child.”

Jim coughed.  “Of course not.  I suppose you started lusting after your brother once his voice changed and the spots went away.”  He paused to breathe, then continued, his voice fainter.  “ _I_ saw past it all, of course.  He was lovely even as that scrawny, pigeon toed boy prattling on to Scotland Yard about Carl Powers’s missing trainers.  But I know what you like.  That otherworldly beauty.  And he didn’t get that until he grew into his feet and started using heroin.”

Mycroft shut off the regulator, stopping Jim’s oxygen.  He removed the mask so he wouldn’t suffocate and threw it on the floor.  Then he picked up the hose, folded a section of it in half lengthwise, and struck Jim hard on his left side, eliciting a strangled cry.  He had, as Moriarty had put it, showed his hand.  There wasn’t a lot he could lose at this point.  He made a few, casual figure eights with the hose, wielding it like a flogger, striking Jim over his collapsed lung.  He squirmed delightfully.  “Tell me about these robberies we’ve been hearing chatter about.”

Jim’s breathing had become short and ragged without his mask, and his words stuttered out with Mycroft’s blows.  “You think you can _beat_ that out of me?  I took worse from your goons yesterday.  When was the last time Sherlock crawled into your bed?”

Mycroft’s pulse elevated.

“Oh come on, Ice Man,” he coughed.  “Ice Queen, morelike.  You’re such a prude.  We’ve established that you’ve never touched Sherlock.  I’d say I admire your restraint, but I don’t, really.”

Mycroft sighed.  “After we buried Redbeard.”

Jim smiled.  “Mmm.  Family dog?  No, Sherlock’s.  He probably picked it out as a puppy, grew up with it.  A loyal dog must have meant a lot to a boy with no friends.  Don’t worry yourself about the robberies.”  He wheezed.  “We’re not going to take anything.  They’re more of a demonstration.”

“Of what?”

Jim went quiet again, but Mycroft suspected it was more to do with his difficulty breathing than defiance.  At last he spoke.  “Why do you pretend Sherlock’s a virgin?”

“He started it, not me.”

“Go on.”

“I asked you a question.”

Jim took another, struggling breath.  “A new piece of cyber technology.  Elaborate.”

“My discovery of Sherlock’s pornography career roughly coincided with the first time we put him into rehab.  I asked him if we needed to be worried about his test results.  He told me he always used clean needles and wasn’t sexually active.”

Jim giggled again, dry lips cracking.  “Did he believe you believed him?”

“If he did, he’s even stupider than I thought.”

“Hmmm.  But there were unintended--or maybe intended--consequences to that little charade.”  Jim paused to breathe again.  His face was pale, and his lips were turning blue.  

Mycroft wondered idly if it was due to hypoxia, or the cold.

“It kept him from confiding in you when things went badly, when he got involved with Baron Maupertius.  There’s your name, Mycroft.  Have you wanked to any of Sherlock’s videos?”

“You’re being evasive, and I won’t tolerate it.  I didn’t ask you for a name, I asked you about the cyber technology.  And the answer to your question is ‘no.’”

“I was just playing fair, Mycroft.  Compensating you for your freebie: you told me Sherlock didn’t believe you.”

Mycroft paused, replaying their conversation back in his head, and cursed himself when he realized Jim was right.  He had answered two questions in a row.

“The robberies are to show off my key,” Jim continued.  “A few, simple lines of computer code that will allow me to hack any system.”

Mycroft scoffed.  “That’s impossible.”

“You lie, I lie.”  Jim licked his lips.  “I lie, you lie, we all lie for … fuck it.  I’ve been awake for what … forty hours?  Plus or minus two; well done, you.”

“Thirty six,” said Mycroft.  “And it’s ‘I scream.’”  He dropped the hose to the floor and stood up, brushing his suit with his palms.  He buttoned his jacket.  The cuffs were wet, but it was otherwise no worse for wear.  He turned on his heel and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

The guards waiting outside the door turned to him.

“Beat him.  Watch the left side; I think his lung has collapsed.  If it worsens, I suppose we can drain it.  You are not to speak to him.  Ignore anything he says to you.  I’ll return in sixteen hours, unless there are any developments before then, in which case, contact Anthea.  Do not let him sleep.  In fact, I’d prefer he be kept standing.  If he can’t support himself, cuff him to the wall.”

“Yes, sir,” they answered in unison.

Mycroft collected his coat and retrieved his phone from the pocket.  He dialed Anthea.  “Pull everything we have on Baron Maupertius.  Almost certainly an alias.  Check anyway.”

 


	4. Part I: Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone. I'm going to do my best to update regularly on Monday's, though there might be a slight delay with the first chapter of part two as it requires extensive revision (though I've banked several chapters after that point which are in good shape). I'll also try to post a Sunday Six teaser, so if you can't make it until Monday, you can follow me at[ anarfea on tumblr.](http://anarfea.tumblr.com/)
> 
> So, this is where things start to get heavy. For those of you who have been gleefully waiting for Mycroft whump, it starts here and will only get worse. For those of you who were expecting something else, I apologize and I've added Mycroft Whump to the tags. You may want to turn back now.
> 
> UPDATE: As of 08/26/2015 the date on this chapter changed. I noticed a continuity error. The content of this chapter remains unaltered.

November 8, 2013

2:56 PM

 

“I can see why this film is your favorite.”  Magnussen tilted his head, watching the screen through his wire rimmed spectacles.  “Must be satisfying to see your little brother experiencing some consequences for once in his life.”

Mycroft pressed his lips together to suppress his sneer.  “I only watched it the one time.”

“Oh, I believe you, Mr Holmes.”  The corner of his lip curved into a smile.   “But how many times did you think about it?  How many times did you touch yourself, thinking about it?  That’s the far more salient question, don’t you think.”

Mycroft said nothing.  He had known Magnussen would pressure him when he invited him to his office.  He’d suspected it would be something to do with Sherlock’s drug habit, or their father, or even Sherrinford’s death, though he’d worked hard to ensure that secret had been very thoroughly buried.  He hadn’t considered this possibility.  

“You know what I think?” said Magnussen, walking towards the window, pretending to look out at the view from the Penthouse while watching Mycroft’s reflection in the glass.  “I think, that, while you’ve been assuaging your guilt by tracking down some of the less ethical pornographers, that this little collection of yours is about far more than evidence.

“I mean, look at this one,” he clicked the remote until he found the thumbnail he was looking for, and pressed play.  The sound was on mute, but an image of his brother with each of his hands around a cock filled the screen.  The gigantic Sherlock sucked them and rubbed them against his semen smeared face by turns.  “Nothing special, really.  Just your garden variety gay porn.  That used to be blackmail material.  Not so much nowadays.  It’s really only leverage with elected officials and professional athletes.  As your brother is widely assumed to be shagging John Watson anyway, it would barely damage his reputation.

“In a post Fifty Shades world, even the bondage porn isn’t so scandalous anymore--the Maupertuis film, perhaps, excepted.  I make a note of all my adversaries’ pornography preferences, Mr Holmes, but I’m really only interested if they’re particularly depraved.  Snuff.   Children.  Animals.”  He turned away from the window to face Mycroft.  “Incest.”

He began to flip through thumbnails on the remote again.  “I’m sure those individuals who feel great personal loyalty to you, and to whom you’ve shown only the worst of the collection,” he paused on a still of Sherlock’s blood striped arse, “would be willing to believe that you’ve amassed your brother’s … _body of work_ … for benevolent reasons.”  He removed his spectacles and tucked them into his coat pocket.  “But what about Sherlock?  He’s developed a reputation as a great observer of detail.  What deductions do you suppose he’d make?”

Mycroft suppressed a shiver.

“What if I threw in this one?” he made another selection.  The screen was blank, but he heard soft panting in stereo sound, interspersed with low moans of ‘John,’ and an abbreviated cry muffled by a pillow or hand.

His eyes widened.  “Where did you get this?”

“I think you know.”

He knew.  But it didn’t make sense.  Magnussen and Moriarty were like oil and water; he couldn’t imagine them having worked together, and Kitty Riley had worked for one of his rivals.

“I never--I’ve checked on Sherlock via CCTV from time to time, and he knows that.  Always from cameras in public areas; I have never planted bugs or cameras in his flat.”

Magnussen shrugged.  “My world is about perceptions, Mr Holmes, not facts.  ‘Dear Jim’ never shared your scruples.  And while he considered himself too good for the likes of me, his estate has been more cooperative.  I’ve obtained all sorts of interesting bits of information which Moriarty collected on Sherlock.”

Mycroft’s brain snagged on the odd choice of words.  His estate.  As though Moriarty had left a will.

“But whom is Sherlock going to believe?” Magnussen continued.  “You?  Or the voices in his head urging him to believe the worst of everyone in the world including himself?”

Mycroft clenched his fingers in the palm of his hand.  “What is it you want, Mr Magnussen?  You wouldn’t have called me here if you weren’t intending to extort something.”

Magnussen chuckled.  “Very well, we’re both businessmen.  Let’s talk business.  The new anti-terrorism bill.  I’m most displeased that it didn’t pass.”

“I thought that businessmen such as yourself were generally in favor of less government interference.”

Magnussen smiled tightly.  “My reasons for wanting the bill to pass are not your concern, Mr Holmes.  But it seemed like a sure thing, and then your brother swooped in and played hero and people forgot about the genuine terrorist threat.”

Mycroft hadn’t exactly been pleased about that particular side effect of Sherlock’s plan, either.  He’d wanted the bill to pass as well, for entirely different reasons, but this conversation was beginning to change his mind.

“I have little enough influence over Parliament, Mr Magnussen.”

He snorted.  “Please.  A great many highly influential MPs frequent your …” he wrinkled his nose, “Diogenes Club.  But that’s not what I’m asking of you.  I’m perfectly capable of getting another vote on this bill or one like it by myself, but it will take time.  This setback has cost us momentum and political capital.”

Us.  Again, he noted the word choice.

Mycroft waited.

“There are always contingencies, Mr Holmes.  Back channels.  I know that some of your superiors will attempt to implement some of the new measures anyway, even without Parliamentary approval.”

Mycroft inclined his head in the subtlest hint of a nod, an assent with room for plausible deniability.

“See that they focus their efforts on the ones which allow the government to seize control over media channels.”

Magnussen’s motives were becoming slightly less opaque, now, and Mycroft didn’t like what they portended.  “I will do my very best, Mr Magnussen.”

“With your reputation, I trust that means swift and measurable results.”

Mycroft arched an eyebrow.  “You flatter me.”

“I look forward to a productive business relationship.”  Magnussen extended his hand.  “Shall we shake on it?”

Mycroft took the handshake.  Magnussen’s grip was vice-like and unrelenting, grinding Mycroft’s metacarpals together, and his palms were clammy and cold.  He turned his palm downward to force Mycroft’s up beneath it.  Mycroft was used to these petty power displays, common enough in the Diogenes, where words were forbidden and everything was left to body language.

“Kneel,” Magnussen said, as casually as if he were asking the time.

Mycroft raised both eyebrows.

“I do not enjoy repeating myself, Mr Holmes.  I have a lovely collection of videos featuring your junkie brother Sherlock.  Some of them are from the Maupertius files, some of them are Moriarty’s, but this is irrelevant.  I highly suspect you have the same collection of videos, or that your brother can be made to believe you do.”  He pointed with his free hand towards his desk.  “I also have this file, which shows you tracked down the producers, sellers, and, in the case of the Maupertuis film, the co-star, and that each of them met with your particular brand of vigilante justice.  I have the recordings of your brother masturbating in his bedroom at Baker St, which suggest your interest in the aforementioned video collection is far from altruistic.  I am more than happy to see that all of this gets presented to Sherlock--through an intermediary, of course.”

Magnussen’s words rammed through Mycroft’s brain like a spike through his skull, and he slowly went to his knees.

Magnussen smirked and opened his flies.

Mycroft sighed, resigned.  Fellatio.  How pedestrian.  He licked his lips and looked upwards.

He had a split second in which to see the stream before he felt it.  His wool waistcoat wicked the acrid liquid, which quickly soaked through to the shirt and vest underneath.  Magnussen languidly waved his cock from side to side, soiling his jacket and trousers as well.  Mycroft was so blindsided that he didn’t begin to register the implications of his predicament until Magnussen finished shaking his prick dry and tucking it back into his trousers.

He stepped back, surveying Mycroft, still on his knees and half soaked in urine.  “So here’s where I give you a choice, Mr Holmes.”

Mycroft looked up, certain he was doing a very poor job of concealing his revulsion.

“Either you leave, now, exactly as you are, and allow yourself to be seen and smelled by everyone on my staff and presumably some on yours, or,” he leaned down, tucking his fingers under Mycroft’s chin, “you take off all your clothes, and my PA takes them to the cleaners and returns in one hour.”  He smiled, a gesture that never touched his eyes.  “The catch, of course, is that you belong to me for that hour.  I promise not to inflict any injury that might draw attention to what we’ve done here, but beyond that, there are no rules, and no safewords.”

Mycroft clenched his fists and pressed them into the damp carpet to push himself up off his knees, finding the maneuver more difficult than it had once been.

This was no choice at all.  If he walked out and spared himself further pain or indignity now, Magnusen could always call him back, later.  He had known that Magnussen would make further requests of him and that he would be forced to comply, but he hadn’t anticipated their nature.  That had been a grave miscalculation, but the alternative--

He thought of Sherlock’s sharp, accusing eyes, boring into him from beneath furrowed brows, of his full upper lip curled in a sneer and flecked with shaving foam.

_You were enjoying it.  Definitely enjoying it._

Mycroft stripped off his jacket, threw it to the floor, and began to unbutton the waistcoat, neither quickly nor slowly.  He discarded that as well and started on the shirt, removing his cuff links and tucking them into his breast pocket.  If nothing else, it was good to get the stinking, soaked garments off his body.  They’d already begun to grow cold.

He removed his shirt, then unfastened his trousers.  It was just a body.  Perhaps a bit softer in places than he would like, the skin looser and more freckled, but he had nothing of which to be ashamed.  He paused to bend and unlace his shoes (they had been spared, at least, having been tucked under his legs while he’d been kneeling) and remove them before dropping his trousers.

Magnussen’s eyes twinkled in amusement.  “Sock garters, Mr Holmes?  How charming.  They can stay.”

Mycroft froze, feeling somehow more awkward in just his socks and pants than he would have fully nude.

Magnussen returned to his desk and pressed the intercom.  “Janine, darling.  Come in, I’ve an errand for you.”

If Magnussen’s PA thought there was anything unusual or untoward about there being a mostly naked man in her boss’s office, or about being asked to take a pile of urine soaked clothes to the dry cleaners, she didn’t show it.  Her face and body language revealed surprisingly little--perhaps not so surprisingly, when one considered her employer.  By her placid expression, Mycroft deduced that this was either something she had done before, or that Magnussen had done other, similar things which she had learned to take in stride, and that she was either completely loyal to him or was being blackmailed as thoroughly as he was.  That he trusted her ability as much as her loyalty was also transparent.  Janine was Magnussen’s Anthea, though he suspected the relationship between them was more complicated.  He would need to do further research.

As soon as she had gone, Magnussen gestured towards his own leather chair.  “Sit.”

Mycroft sat straight, hands resting on top of his thighs, and turned his head expectantly.  He registered the sound of Magnussen opening one of the drawers in the long table in front of the window behind him.  He resisted the urge to turn the wheeled chair to face him.

Magnussen stood behind him and unceremoniously dropped a bottle of lubricant into his lap.  He caught it before it rolled away.

“I expect you know how to prepare yourself.”

He wasn’t sure whether or not he was expected to respond.  After a moment’s uneasy silence, he answered.  “I do.”

“Good.”

Mycroft went to the waistband of his pants.

“Keep them on, please.  I’m loving the public schoolboy look.  Quite … fetching.”

Mycroft paused, and leaned back in the chair, opening his legs.  Perspiration beaded on his back and made him stick uncomfortably to the leather.  The lubricant was in a pump bottle.  He pressed it twice into his hand and then hooked the fingers of the other underneath the elastic of his pants leg.  He felt Magnussen’s eyes on him from behind the chair, and refused to look up.  He smeared the lube on his fingertips against his entrance.

“Lovely.”

Mycroft could hear the smirk without needing to see his face.  Magnussen walked around him and sat on the desk, legs spread.  “I think the view is better from here.”  He nudged at Mycroft’s ankle with his toe, and Mycroft opened himself wider.  “Yes, much nicer.  Scoot all the way to the end.”

Mycroft shifted on the chair, avoiding looking at Magnussen’s face, and moved his hips forward, still with a finger against his hole.  If Magnussen intended to penetrate him, he supposed he should get himself as loose as possible.  He pressed a finger in.  

“If you’re not going to look at me, Mr Holmes, perhaps I can find something else to divert your attention.”

He looked up, briefly meeting Magnussen’s eyes.  His pupils remained normal size, and his lids were wide open.  His expression was one of curiosity, not arousal.  He smiled, though, when Mycroft looked at him, and removed the remote from the desk.

“Let’s watch your favorite movie.”

 


	5. Part I: Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay everyone. I had a totally different scene planned for the original version of Chapter Five, which I decided just didn't fit anymore with the later chapters. So, I wrote you a new chapter over the Antidiogenes War Weekend. Thanks to all of the ADers who cheered me on, but most especially to redscudery and beyonces_fiancee for doing a short notice beta so I could get this up for you this week. I will try to update on Mondays going forward, but if I don't, Thursday is usually my next good posting day.
> 
> UPDATE 08/26/15 The date on this chapter has been changed due to me fixing continuity errors. The content of the chapter is unchanged.

March 14, 2011

4:13 PM

 

Jim was shackled to the wall, as Mycroft had requested, drawn up onto his toes in the corner with a wrist anchored to the wall on either side.  The cuffs around his wrists were padded to prevent pressure bruising, but his fingers were lilac, even though his position had been changed periodically over the past sixteen hours.  The room had been kept cold; Mycroft had left his jacket on, this time.  Jim he had ordered stripped naked.  The cuffs held his arms open, forcing him to expose his vulnerable midline.

Mycroft let his eyes roam over Moriarty’s body, taking in every mark and scar.  Nothing unexpected.  His skin was criss-crossed with the marks of sustained childhood abuse as well as defensive wounds from fighs.  A cluster of scars on his right thigh, which were heavier at the outside edge and lightened as they grew inward, appeared to be self-inflicted.  He was lightly muscled, clearly preferring to build his body by using only his own weight rather than lifting barbells.  Probably he had first begun training when he hadn’t had access to a gym.

Mycroft approached Jim with the styrofoam cup, a straw peeking out of its plastic lid.  Jim’s eyes glittered as he tracked it.

Mycroft’s lips thinned in triumph.  Moriarty might have a pain tolerance that was growing legendary among the guards and agents, but, however pleasure and pain were cross-wired in his brain, his metabolism needed water to function.

He took a sip himself, to reassure Jim he wasn’t going to be drugged or poisoned.  It was a sickly sweet sports drink; his body would need sugar, salts, and electrolytes in addition to fluids.  He made an exaggerated show of swallowing as Jim watched, lips parting unconsciously.

“Let’s talk again about this key code,” he began.  “What is it, really?  A back door built into a widely utilized program?”  He brought the straw just out of Moriarty’s reach, smiling slightly despite himself as Jim craned his neck forward.  “You can’t really hack into any system with a few digits of binary.”

Jim shook his head, turning away from the straw.  “You can’t tempt me with water, Ice Man.  I want more answers.”

Mycroft grit his teeth.  Given enough time, he knew he could break Jim.  He disliked this trading of information; he knew that it had cost him too much last round.  But he was still feeling his way around the political dynamics since the Cabinet reshuffle, and he didn’t like the direction in which power was shifting.  He was running out of time.

“That depends on the question.”

Jim took a shaking breath; it was clear it taxed his lungs.  The pneumothorax was confirmed, and Mycroft’s medical advisor had ‘strongly advised’ him against further waterboarding.  He probably would have advised against this particular regimen of stress positions, too, had he known about it, but Mycroft needed results, and quickly.

“Tell me about your other brother,” Jim croaked, his voice barely above a whisper.  “Sherrinford Scott.”

Mycroft arched an eyebrow.  “What about him?”  He’d anticipated Moriarty would ask about Sherrinford, and had thought carefully about his response.

“There were three Scott boys.  Now there are two Holmes boys.”

“That’s not a question.”

Jim fixed his hungry, hollow eyes straight at Mycroft.  “Did you love him?”

That hadn’t been the question he’d anticipated at all.

 

* * *

 

 

August 08, 2014

4:06 AM

 

_Mycroft ran through a maze of hedgerows, dodging gnarled roots and the long fingers of topiary figures reaching for him.  The branches snagged on his clothes and tore his skin.  Snowdrifts shifted in the wind, which shrieked down the tunnels and swirled up flurries of flakes around his feet.  His hand caught a thorn, which sliced his palm open like a blade.  Blood splattered the snow, hissing and eating through it like acid, the red droplets growing outward like blooming cigarette burns._

_As the snow melted away, he saw blue and grey herringbone--Sherrinford’s coat.  He fell to his knees, frantically clawing at the snow, piling it on top of his brother’s body, but it kept melting.  His hands froze into claws as he continued to dig, increasingly frantic.  The snowmelt soaked his trousers, chilling him to his marrow, until the red cells floating in his veins solidified into crystals, and he was unable to move.  The snow vaporized, turning into white mist, and it wasn’t Sherrinford lying on the frozen ground, but Sherlock--lips blue, eyes closed.  He threw himself over his brother’s body, screaming into his chest without sound.  He reached towards Sherlock’s face with trembling fingers, blood still streaming from his hand, droplets falling on Sherlock’s face._

_His brother’s eyes opened, brilliant, bright blue burning him to the core, jump-starting his heart.  The ice in his veins shattered.  His heart kept beating, beating, roaring louder; the blood sloshed hard through his veins like a flash flood filling a canal, crushing the valves.  The_ sound _.  His head was under a waterfall; the blood beat against his skull.  His heart burned in his chest, rattling his ribs, bruising his lungs._

Mycroft.

_Sherlock’s lips did not move.  Still, his voice boomed through Mycroft’s body, through the whole of his being._

_“Sherlock.”_

_His heart burst.  Blood tumbled from his lips with the word, spilling down his chin, soaking the wool of Sherrinford’s coat.  He toppled onto his brother, his face landing in the crook of Sherlock’s neck.  He rolled to the side, resisting the urge to kiss--he would die first.  He would die first._

_He lay on his back, his cheek next to Sherlock’s, staring up at the white void of a sky while the red bled out of him._

_And then the hollowness swallowed him, and he felt nothing, and saw nothing._

 

* * *

 

 

March 15, 2011

3:48 AM

 

The vibration of his phone against the nightstand woke him.  He glanced at the screen.  Anthea.  Mycroft sat up in bed and coughed once to clear his throat before he took the call.  “Yes?”

He’d long since trained Anthea not to apologize for waking him.  She never woke him unless it was an emergency, and Mycroft would always chose more time to respond to an emergency over sleep.

“Lady Smallwood has authorized Moriarty’s release, sir.”

He let out a hiss of breath between his teeth.  “It was Moran, wasn’t it?”   _Lord_ Moran, the recently appointed Minister for Overseas Development.  He made Mycroft’s skin crawl, but nothing had come up when he’d been vetted.  He’d asked Anthea to continue looking into Moran off the record, but Mycroft’s resources had been considerably curtailed now that Moran was a cabinet member as well as a Peer, and he had had to conceal his investigation from his superiors.

“Yes,” Anthea confirmed.  “He pointed out that we’ve been unable to directly tie Moriarty to the terror cell in Karachi and that the existence of the key code is improbable.”

He let his head fall back against the headboard.  “I need to speak with Lady Smallwood.”

“I’ve scheduled a ten o’clock.  It was the earliest I could get.  I’m sorry.”

A headache was beginning to bloom behind his eyes.  “You’ve nothing to apologize for, Anthea.”

“We still have Moriarty under surveillance, of course.  I could assign a security detail to your brother, as well--”

“Don’t.  He’ll spot the tail; we haven’t anyone good enough.”  The last thing he needed now was an altercation with Sherlock.  “Moriarty isn’t an immediate threat to my brother.”  Not yet, anyway.  Jim was waiting for something; he was the king of dramatic gestures.  He just had to figure out what Moriarty was planning.  He hadn’t been able to make Jim tell him, so now he would have to wait for Jim to show him.  “Just keep watching him.  And Moran.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Is that all?

“Yes, I’ll let you go back to sleep.”

Mycroft set down his phone and swung his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing his temples and cradling his head in his hands. He’d known he would have to release Moriarty eventually, but he hadn’t anticipated that Moran would come to his aid.  He’d been on the defensive since … The Bruce Partington plans.  Moriarty’s hostage game.  Bond Air.  The Cabinet reshuffle.  Every time, Moriarty had moved first, and Mycroft had had to counter.  He had thought, when he’d taken Moriarty in for questioning, that he’d finally been on the offensive, and he’d been wrong.

When he and Sherrinford had been young, they had played chess together.  Sherrinford had always made Mycroft play black.  He’d loathed it.  He’d hated having to go second, each move dictated by Sherrinford’s.  He’d lost, most of the time.  But occasionally, there had been moments, moments Mycroft had lived for, when he’d felt the tables turn, when he’d been able to shift from defense to offense, when he’d begun to control the board and confine Sherrinford’s movements.  

He thought of the last game they had played.  Siger and their mother had dragged them to some kind of formal party.  Sherrinford had been restless and Mycroft had been bored out of his skull, and they’d begun playing blindfold chess at the supper table, whispering their moves to one another, each of them holding the layout of the board in his own head, always with several minutes in between each turn to avoid drawing attention to what they were doing.

Mycroft had been playing black, and winning, until Sherrinford had moved his rook through a square occupied by Mycroft’s knight, and Mycroft had pointed out the move had been illegal.  As soon as his brother had realized his error, he’d also realized that Mycroft was playing for a smothered mate.  He’d taken the knight, and, after a bloody exchange of material, disentangled his pieces and eventually mated Mycroft.  Sherrinford had declared victory, and Mycroft had fumed through the rest of the party.

When they’d arrived home, he’d confronted Sherrinford, getting out a chess board and replaying the match from the beginning, having memorized both his own moves and his brother’s, pointing out when Sherrinford had forgotten the location of the pieces and how, since he’d only won because Mycroft had jogged his memory, he had in fact failed at blindfold chess, and the sportsmanlike thing to do would have been to forfeit.

He had ended up on the floor on his belly with his own trouser socks in his mouth and Sherrinford’s knee in his back, sobbing around the improvised gag while his brother torqued his arm behind him and bent his fingers until he was sure they’d break.  They hadnt’t, although Sherrinford had continued for what to Mycroft had felt like hours, though he knew now it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, until Sherrinford was satisfied that Mycroft had learned the meaning of the word ‘forfeit.’  They never played chess again.

Sherlock had asked Mycroft to play with him, once.  He’d smiled to cover the sick feeling in his stomach and suggested they play Operation instead, and his brother had laughingly agreed.  It had become a sort of joke between them.  The games that he and Sherlock played were silly, and while they were fiercely competitive, it was never truly serious.  He worried for how this boded for his brother’s interactions with Moriarty.  Sherlock had enjoyed solving Jim’s puzzles while people’s lives hung in the balance, too caught up in the thrill of the game to fully grasp the depth of his opponent’s psychopathy.  Mycroft had looked into the madness behind Jim’s eyes, and knew that the game for him was deadly serious, that he was playing for stakes higher than life and death.  Moriarty viewed Sherlock as his nemesis, and saw their battle not as to the death but to ruination.  Mycroft had played an opponent who’d meant to destroy him before, and won, playing black.  He hoped Sherlock could do the same.

He yawned and rubbed his eyes, forcing himself to climb out of bed.  There would be no more sleep for him this morning.  He made his way to the en-suite, hoping he’d feel less wretched after a shower and shave.  He flicked on the light and blinked at the mirror, staring at his wan reflection, at the bruises beneath his eyes.  For a moment, he saw Jim’s pale, glistening face, his eyes shining darkly in the green-tinged fluorescent light.

_Did you love him?_

_Yes._

_But you love Sherlock more._

_That’s not a question._

 

END OF PART I

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that wraps Part I, people. The next three chapters are queued up and beta'd and ready to go, so I think I'm going to go ahead and post the first chapter of Part II on Monday and try to get back on a Monday schedule. Part II looks like it's going to have six chapters, and I've written four and a half, so I think I'm in good shape to stick to that. There may be a short hiatus between Part II and Part III depending on what I get accomplished this month; right now it's mostly outline. Thank you all for reading and I hope you're as excited for Part II as I am.


	6. Part II: Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is written from the POV of a character experiencing sexual attraction to a minor. I tried to write it in such a way so that it could be skipped for those who are uncomfortable with depictions of this nature, but the feedback from my betas suggested that the first version was unsuccessful as it lacked the larger context needed to ground the scene. So unfortunately, there is crucial character and plot information contained in this chapter.
> 
> For those who do not wish to read it, I would recommend you wait until next update (should be Thursday). I will summarize this chapter in the notes at the start of the next one (I don't want to spoil people who haven't read it by putting a summary at the beginning of this chapter, and I don't want to make people who don't want to read it have to scroll through it to get to notes at the end).
> 
> Thanks very much to redscudery, beyonces_fiancee, and Beaubete for agreeing to beta read this chapter, which was especially difficult for me to write, and, I imagine, to read.

July 30, 1987

10:17 PM

 

_Mycroft floated in a sea of cotton and down, afternoon sunlight warm on his skin and Colin’s perfect, cupid’s bow lips around the shaft of his cock.  He bit his own lip at the sight and fought the urge to thrust into the familiar wetness of his mouth.  Colin released Mycroft’s cock and let it spring free to bounce against his lips, then climbed up his body with salacious intent.  Mycroft reached out to pull him into a kiss, twining his hands in his--_

\--soft curls.  Colin’s hair was straight and fine, parted above his left eyebrow.  His eyes flew open and met Sherlock’s, stunned and silver in the moonlight.  Sherlock was curled against him, head tucked up against his shoulder, and Mycroft’s fingers were tangled in his brother’s dark, untidy nest of hair.

“Jesus, Sherlock.” He pushed him off his chest, sending him rolling across the bed.  His heart was battering his ribs like a caged bird; his cock was straining against his pyjama bottoms and had Sherlock felt it?  His brother had been atop the bed and the duvet had been between them, thank God.  “Don’t _do_ that,” he snarled.

Sherlock’s lip trembled.

_Shit._

He slowly turned to face his brother, trying to avoid drawing attention to the tented sheets while willing his erection to go back down.  “Sherlock, I’m sorry I snapped at you.  But you need to knock before you enter people’s bedrooms.  You startled me.”

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock muttered.  “I couldn’t sleep.  I was thinking about Redbeard.”

He should have anticipated as much.  He _had_ anticipated it, in the beginning.  He’d asked their parents to wait to euthanize the dog until he was home for summer hols, so that he could be there for Sherlock if he took it as hard as Mycroft expected he would.  He’d also begged them not to invite Sherrinford, even though his older brother refused their invitation every year, out of concern that he would, with his uncanny timing, pick this of all times to intrude.  In retrospect, that had been a mistake; if his parents had altered their behavior, Sherrinford might have made note of it.  But his mother had, as usual, made her offer, and Sherrinford had, as usual, declined.  He refused to set foot in the house their mother shared with a man whom Mycroft had come to accept as his father but whom Sherrinford never would.  Mycroft thought of Siger as a sire, now, nothing more, but to Sherrinford, he was their father, and Brian Holmes was some kind of interloper.  Although Mycroft hadn’t seen his elder brother in person since Siger’s funeral, he still felt relieved every time his mother told him Sherrinford wouldn’t visit again this summer.  His absence was a greater boon now than ever before.

Mycroft had insisted on handling Redbeard’s burial himself, brushing aside their father's assistance digging the grave.  He would have taken the dog to the veterinarian’s alone as well, but Sherlock had begged to be allowed to say goodbye, and Mycroft had relented.  

He’d second guessed himself the whole ride to town, stealing glances at his brother in the rear-view mirror; Sherlock had cradled the dog in his arms and braced his feet against the passenger seat.  But once they’d arrived, Sherlock had seemed to do so well; he’d turned his head into Mycroft’s chest when the veterinarian had injected the pentobarbital into the scruff of Redbeard’s neck, but he hadn’t cried.  He hadn’t cried when Mycroft had lowered the blanket wrapped form into the ground beneath the oak tree.  Sherlock hadn’t even cried when he’d laid the wooden plaque on which he’d burned Redbeard’s name atop the freshly turned earth.

Mycroft had, stupidly, decided the worst was over when he’d tried to put his arm around Sherlock’s shoulders and his brother had shrugged him off and stomped towards the house.  He’d almost regretted asking his parents to wait to put the dog down, worried Redbeard’s suffering had been prolonged needlessly.  Sherlock had done so much better than expected, and while he felt a slight, unexpected pang of regret to see how much his little brother had grown up, he’d mostly been relieved.

And, judging by Sherlock’s splotched face and puffy eyelids, he’d also been entirely wrong about how well he was coping.  Or, he supposed, he’d initially been right to insist on being home, even postponing his internship at the House of Lords.  He’d explained that there had been a death in the family, and neglected to mention that it had been his brother’s Irish Setter.  Mycroft’s first instincts were usually right.  Where he needed to improve was in trusting them.

“Can I sleep with you?”  Sherlock asked.

As usual, his brother didn’t bother to wait for a response.  A rush of air whooshed across his chest as Sherlock pulled back the duvet, and the mattress dipped beside him as he climbed in.  Mycroft shivered, even though he summer night was warm.

Sherlock dove into Mycroft, burying his face in his bare chest, much as he had at the veterinarian’s office.  As soon as Mycroft folded his arms around him, his brother began to sob.  His tears were hot against his skin.  Mycroft stretched his hand out and touched Sherlock’s curls, deliberately this time, amazed at how soft and fine they were, how easily they slipped between his fingers.

“Shhh,” Mycroft whispered.  “It’s okay.  I know you miss him, now, but you’re going to be okay.”  He stroked Sherlock’s shaking shoulders, surprised by the heat of his naked back.  Sherlock clutched him with all his meager might, as though he were trying to climb inside Mycroft.  He tightened his grip, one arm across Sherlock’s scapulae and the other over his hips, remembering how his brother had responded well to being wrapped tightly in a towel when he’d had tantrums as a child.  Sherlock went limp against him, seeming to release the grief pent up in his taut body.  Mycroft was awed by how easy it had been to soothe him with firm touch.  He ran his fingers down the length of Sherlock’s spine, and was rewarded with a shuddering sigh, after which Sherlock’s sobs quieted from full body shakes to subdued shivers.

He stroked his brother’s hair again, and Sherlock butted his head against his palm like a pleased cat.  Mycroft craned his neck to kiss the crown of his head, and Sherlock stirred, looking up at him.  The moon cast silver light over Sherlock’s face, revealing angles that Mycroft hadn’t seen when he’d last been home at Christmas.  His brother’s cheeks had lost the last of their baby softness, he mused, as he brought his thumb up and brushed his tears away.

Mycroft let his thumb follow the trail of moisture down Sherlock’s face, tracing the contours of his upper lip.  He’d worried it terribly on the drive to the vet, chewing it until it had bled.  He was startled at how sensual Sherlock’s lips were, swollen.  He felt an overwhelming desire to lift his brother’s chin and kiss his bitten lips, to bury his fingers in his curls and cradle him in his arms forever, or at least until morning.  He wondered what Sherlock would do--if he would relax into Mycroft’s kiss as he had his touch, if he would open his mouth, if his mouth would taste like his own.

He felt blood drifting to his groin again, more insistent now that the heat of Sherlock’s body was pressed close.  He clenched his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, fully intending to pull him up, to roll him over, to pin Sherlock’s body to the mattress with his own, and then realized what he’d been about to do--what he was doing.  He dropped his hands to his sides, digging his fingernails into his palms until the pain drove away his burgeoning erection.  Bile rose in his throat.  

Sherlock blinked at him, confusion written on his pale face.

“Stop it,” he hissed.  He tried to push Sherlock off of him, but his brother gripped him harder, nails digging into his chest.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re being a baby, clinging to me like some kind of security blanket.”

Sherlock began to sob again, but he let go of Mycroft, leaving a trail of snot across his shoulder as he rolled away.  He lay on his back and brought both of his hands to his face, hiccuping as he rubbed his eyes.

Mycroft crossed his arms to stanch his impulse to reach for Sherlock.  “Crying isn’t going to change anything.”  He let the contempt he felt for himself enter his voice.  “All lives end, Sherlock.  And dogs have shorter lives than humans.  Redbeard was sick for months.  You knew what that meant and you should have used the time to come to terms with it.”

“I know,” Sherlock wailed.  “But I didn’t want to.  He was my friend, Mycroft.”

“He wasn’t your friend, Sherlock.  He was a _dog_.  You were anthropomorphising him.  You let sentiment cloud your judgement and you saw a friendship because that’s what you wanted to see.”

“You sound like Sherrinford.”  Sherlock’s voice was muffled behind his hands; he’d thrown them in front of his mouth as if trying to shove them back in.

His first year at Eton, Mycroft had fallen from a step-stool in the gymnasium cupboard, landing flat on his back on the concrete with a medicine ball on his chest.  Now, as then, all the air was driven from his lungs, and his chest hurt too badly to breathe.

For the whole of Sherlock’s life, Mycroft had tried to shield him from Sherrinford.  He’d worked hard to keep his older brother’s viciousness focused on himself.  He’d been terrified Sherrinford would harm Sherlock, or worse, turn his morbid curiosity towards cruelty, goad him into experimenting on live animals instead of dead ones.  He thought he’d been mostly successful, convincing Sherrinford that Sherlock, who’d spoken so late, was stupid and beneath their consideration.  He’d known that he was hurting Sherlock, too, but it seemed preferable, better to wound his pride than expose him to Sherrinford’s more insidious torments.  He wondered if that had been a mistake.

That decision had been unconscious, instinctive.  Defending Sherlock had been like breathing.  He hadn’t yet understood concepts like collateral damage.  Now, he saw himself poised at the edge of a still pond, about to fling a stone into the water, and he could see every ripple that would move outward when it fell.  Sherlock would be angry, hurt, betrayed.  He would come to regard Mycroft, perhaps not as a monster on the scale of Sherrinford, but how Mycroft had once regarded Siger, with seething resentment and barely disguised contempt.  He would pull away, and Mycroft needed him to, because he was too weak to pull away himself.

He sat up in bed and flung the duvet off Sherlock.

“Out.”  

His brother blinked at him, wide eyed, his face white in the moonlight.

“You heard me, out.”

Sherlock’s face crumpled.  He sat up, wiping away tears and snot, and turned sideways, legs dangling off the bed, as though expecting Mycroft to change his mind.  Mycroft wanted to.  He wanted to sit up and curl his body against his brother’s, to say he hadn’t meant it, to pull him back into bed and and kiss the curls at the nape of his neck and tell him he could stay the night, that he could stay every night.  And he saw the ripples that flowed from that stone, too--a betrayal far greater than Sherlock’s young mind was capable of comprehending, a hurt that would eclipse anything that Sherrinford, even in his blackest moods, had ever done.

“Go, Sherlock.”

His brother stood up and turned to face him, trembling with rage.  “I thought you were different.  But you’re horrible, just like everyone else, and I hate you.”

“Stop being dramatic.  Go back to your own bed and sleep.  And don’t come into my room again.”

Sherlock turned on his heel and fled, slamming the door behind him.

Mycroft winced, hoping his brother hadn’t woken their parents.  He wondered what they would do if they knew what he’d almost done.  He was partly afraid their mother would disown him and more afraid she wouldn’t, that she’d grown accustomed to not seeing the terrible things her sons did to each other.  Siger would have denounced him for the wrong reasons, more concerned with the scandal than with Sherlock’s well being.  Their father--he honestly didn’t know, but he understood that Sherlock was Brian Holmes’s son in ways that Mycroft never would be.

He felt hollow inside.  Numb.  He turned onto his belly to try to mitigate the crushing weight on his chest.  The sheets were still warm from Sherlock’s body.  He rolled into the fading heat, chasing the last traces of Sherlock’s scent-- the faint herbal aroma of his shampoo and the subtler, more forbidden notes of his summer sweat.

His traitorous erection returned as the smell of Sherlock’s body conjured the image of his brother splayed beneath him.  He forced the thought from his mind, trying to picture Colin in his place, to recapture the dream he’d been having when Sherlock had awakened him.  Instead, he found himself noting with horror the similarities between Colin’s face and his brother’s--the heart-shaped lips and wide-set eyes.  Even Sherlock’s body might be like Colin’s in five or six years time, if he grew as tall as he seemed likely to and kept the leanness that both his brothers had inherited from Siger.  As soon as he made the connection, he knew he’d have to end it.  Colin had another year yet at Eton whereas Mycroft would go on to Cambridge come autumn; that seemed as good a pretext as any.

He imagined Sherlock at Colin’s age, long limbed and lithe and astride him, and the ache in his untouched cock and bollocks bloomed until it verged on pain.  He rutted once against the mattress, then forced himself to stop, because if one thing was clear, it was that the wrongness of his desire for Sherlock wasn’t going to become right as his brother got older.  No matter his age, or Mycroft’s, so grounded was his want in Sherlock’s fragility, in the way he relied on Mycroft for protection, that to act on it would violate the trust his brother had placed in him as a child.

He clenched his hands into fists and buried his face into the pillow, which was still damp from Sherlock’s tears.  His throat burned so badly it choked off his air, or maybe he choked because his nose and mouth were pressed deep into down.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to breathe.  For an absurd moment, he fantasized about holding his breath until he died, which he knew was an impossibility.  He’d start breathing again as soon as he passed out.  He sobbed once, and then bit his lip until he tasted blood to stifle himself.  Crying wouldn’t change anything.  He’d told his brother as much.

Still, he couldn’t stanch the flood of tears flowing from his eyes, hot against cheeks already flushed with lust and shame.  The knowledge that, behind a closed door across the hall, Sherlock was also weeping, only made him more wretched.  His brother had had two friends in the world: Mycroft, and Redbeard, and he’d lost them both in the same day.  Sherlock would never forgive him.  Mycroft would never forgive himself.  He found himself envying Redbeard. 


	7. Part II: Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The previous chapter is set in July 30, 1987. Mycroft, recently graduated from Eaton, has just arrived home for summer hols. He requested his parents wait to put down Sherlock's dog Redbeard until he can be there for his brother. His older brother, Sherrinford, has not come home, having refused to see their mother since she re-married Brian Holmes after she divorced Siger Scott, Mycroft's biological father. Mycroft has managed to avoid any contact with Sherrinford since Siger's funeral four years prior. Mr Holmes since adopted both Sherlock and Mycroft, but not Sherrinford.
> 
> Mycroft makes Redbeard's appointment, brings Sherlock (who insisted on being present) and his dog to the vet, and buries the dog after. He is impressed by how grown up his brother appears and how well he handles it--until he breaks down and creeps into Mycroft's bed in the middle of the night.
> 
> Mycroft attempts to soothe Sherlock, and becomes frightened when his feelings of protectiveness veer into desire. He lashes out at Sherlock, telling him he's being a baby to get him to leave. Mycroft resolves he will do whatever it takes to drive Sherlock away, knowing it will ruin their relationship, rather than risk acting on these feelings.

January 28, 2011

11: 49 PM

 

“Back so soon?” Mycroft asked his brother, looking up from his phone.  He’d been sending a flurry of emails from his chair in front of the fire.  “I’d have thought you wouldn’t have wanted to spoil your grand exit.”  That had been dramatic even by Sherlock’s standards, his casual domination of the dominatrix, quipping ‘sorry about dinner,’ and then sweeping out, leaving a woman he’d clearly felt some manner of affection for in tears.  Mycroft honestly hadn’t been entirely certain his brother had had it in him.  He had seen Sherlock having sex with women on film, albeit only in the context of group scenes.  But feigning lust on camera was one thing, going through the motions of love, perhaps even becoming swept up in sentiment, and ultimately, not letting it get in the way of _winning_ , that was something else entirely.  If Sherlock hadn’t bungled things spectacularly before only partially salvaging them, he might even have been proud.

Sherlock rolled his eyes.  “No, I just, thought I ... if there were any loose ends that needed tying up on this whole Irene Adler affair ….”

Mycroft smiled despite his pounding headache, uneasy stomach and better judgement.  First, Sherlock had made a near-apology, and now, he was attempting to make amends.  It was almost sweet.  Mycroft swallowed harder than he’d intended, feeling the burn of the brandy slither down his throat.  The alcohol opened up his sinuses.  He rose, somewhat unsteadily, and poured a glass for Sherlock to give himself something to do.  So far as he knew, alcohol had never been one of his brother’s vices.

“Brother mine,” he said, placing the glass in Sherlock’s outstretched fingers, “I think you’ve ‘helped’ quite enough with the case already.”

Sherlock stared at the glass, swirled it without sipping, and frowned.  “If you’d just told me what you were about instead of being so bloody secretive, I’m sure the worst of the unpleasantness could have been avoided.”

“Actually, I think everything would have gone splendidly if you had simply _listened to me_ when I told you that the Adler woman was no longer your affair.”

Sherlock snorted.

“While there are loose ends,” Mycroft continued, “I think I can manage well enough without your assistance.  It’s so much easier just to tie them to each other.”  Although he was hardly looking forward to telling his superiors that Bond Air had been a spectacular waste of both time and money, the real object, of course, had been to dismantle the terror cell in Karachi, and so long as that was accomplished, he was confident in his ability to control the fallout of Moriarty’s latest maneuver.  

“What are you plotting, _brother mine_?” Sherlock’s voice dripped with sarcasm whenever he used the endearment.  In truth, Mycroft’s did now most times as well.  Once, this had been a genuine term of affection.

“Moriarty must be dealt with.  If he wants my attention, he shall have it.”

“What will you do?” Sherlock asked.

“His involvement with the terror cell is significant enough that I can pick him up for questioning.  I’ve been wanting to do so for some time,” especially after the ‘game’ he’d played with Sherlock, “but the people who’d need to sign off on that sort of thing weren’t so concerned about his ‘consulting business.’  Now that he’s become a national security threat ...”

“You have leverage.”

“Precisely.”  At least until the Cabinet reshuffle.  Best to strike while the iron was hot.

“So, you pick Moriarty up, throw him to the ‘people you deeply regret can extract things from him,’ and then?”

“We plan.”

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow.  “For?”

“He’s insane.  And clearly obsessed with you.  The former means the latter might be something not even I can deter.”

Sherlock stared into his brandy.  “You think he’s going to make good on his plan to ‘burn me.’”

“I think he might succeed if you don’t take precautions.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened marginally, much as they had when Mycroft has asked him ‘how would you know’ in front of John Watson.  “You’re afraid of him.”

Mycroft met his brother’s gaze steadily.  “I am.  You should be, too.”

Sherlock glanced away, worrying his lower lip.

Good.  Let him take it seriously.

“And what of Irene?” Sherlock asked, changing the subject.  “What of the terrorists?” he added as an afterthought.  Attentive as his brother was to detail, he so often missed the bigger picture.

Mycroft swirled his brandy.  “I meant it when I told Ms Adler I wished our lot were half as good as she.  And for this particular mission, she’s particularly well suited.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed.  “You want to use Irene to spring a trap on the Karachi terror cell.”

“She’s in some ways the perfect asset.  No need to invest in a cover for her; she can gain access as Moriarty’s agent.”

“And if she’s made and should happen to be killed, so much the better,” his brother sneered, making no effort to hide his disdain.

Mycroft arched an eyebrow.  Was Sherlock veering into sentiment again, after all?  “I’m hardly hoping her mission will fail.  I would much prefer she succeed, and I think her chances are good. But, should things go badly, well, better her than one of ours.”

Sherlock scoffed.  “Ice Man.  One of us, at least, lives up to Moriarty’s moniker.”

He could see the anger shimmering around Sherlock, visible in the tight line of his body and the slices of white at the pads of his fingertips curled around his glass.  It would be wiser, better, to let the matter drop, but as was so frequently the case when Sherlock vexed him, he couldn’t resist a repartee.

“Does that mean you’re done pretending to be a virgin?”

Sherlock stiffened.

Mycroft stood up, smiling into his brandy.  “‘I imagine John Watson thinks love’s a mystery to me.’  That’s what this has all been for, hasn’t it?  I’m exploiting Ms Adler’s skill set to save lives.  You used her to make your flatmate jealous.  You can feign outrage all you like, but I think this is a case of ‘pot, meet kettle.’”

“This has nothing to do with John.”

“Oh, Sherlock, I’ve no idea how you manage to thrive among the criminal element.  You are a _terrible_ liar.”

His brother set the glass down with a clack on end of the table opposite Mycroft.  “Fine.  I’m sick of it being assumed that because I made a conscious decision to be celibate, that I’m somehow ….” he began to pace, waving his hands about, “naive.  That was Adler’s error.  She thought I was some kind of innocent.”

“And you want John to know you’re experienced?” he tilted his head, expectant.

“I don’t want John’s pity,” he snapped.  “And you were hardly helpful,” he muttered into his brandy.

“Ah,” said Mycroft.  “You told me you were above the baser impulses.  I did you the courtesy of believing you.”

Sherlock’s lip quirked.  “Now who’s the terrible liar.”

Mycroft paused for a sip of brandy.  “Touché.”

“Anyway,” Sherlock continued, “Irene was actually …  I mean, I’ve always known that, should I change my mind, I wouldn’t lack for potential partners.”

“Only modesty, apparently.”

Sherlock scowled.

“I’m sorry, do continue.”  Mycroft worried he had perhaps shut the conversation down with his remark.  He blamed the brandy.  He was beginning to feel loose limbed and warm.

To his amazement, Sherlock did.  “But they’re all idiots.  They’re only interested in ….”  He made a vague hand gesture in the direction of his body.

Mycroft understood--both why his brother resented being objectified, and why people objectified him.

“Irene, though.  The game is fun with a worthy opponent.  I was almost sorry to beat her.”

Mycroft folded his hands beneath his chin.  So that was Adler’s appeal, then.  Sherlock had always been desperate for appreciation, chasing it like a plant sunlight (or a moth flame).  But he much preferred the admiration of people he himself admired.  John Watson.  Irene Adler.  James Moriarty.  The last made his palms sweat.  Mycroft would have given anything to be that kind of mirror for his brother.  He had been, once, before he’d driven Sherlock away.

“‘I imagine you’d like to sleep on it--too bad.’”  His brother threw his arms wide, brandy sloshing in his tumbler, grinning like a loon.  “Brilliant power play.”

Mycroft could appreciate it, even having been on the receiving end, though he’d relished Sherlock’s response more.  “Not quite the equal of yours.”

Sherlock _glowed_ , and for a second, Mycroft felt a glimmer of what it might be like to be the one to inspire and bask in that light, and remembered why it was something he couldn’t allow.  “Your trick with the camera phone hardly makes up for your earlier debacle.  Don’t look so smug; it’s not decent.”

Sherlock smiled on, unchastened.  “Decency.  Not really my area.”

Though he was fairly certain that it was merely a combination of Sherlock being flip, his natural charm, and Mycroft’s own wishful thinking, he sometimes felt that his brother was flirting with him.  Certainly, at least, Sherlock was acknowledging, for the first time, that he knew Mycroft knew about his history.

Mycroft raised his glass to his lips to give himself a moment to find a response, taking a sip of brandy while he tried very hard not to think about exactly _how_ indecent Sherlock could be.  “Pretend, then,” he said at last, “for my sake.”

Sherlock gave him a long, thoughtful look.  “Always.”


	8. Part II: Chapter Three

October 18, 2013

1:53 AM

 

His brother was standing with his nose to the far wall, hands stretched above his head and touching the mildew spotted bricks when they entered.  Considering he’d been informed that Sherlock had been kept awake for more than fifty hours, Mycroft was impressed that he was on his feet, let alone in a stress position.  It gave him hope for his brother holding out just a little bit longer.  He arched an eyebrow at the thug who passed for an interrogator around here by way of inquiry. 

“Oh, that’s just for the past twenty minutes,” the thug explained in Serbian.   Mycroft understood most of what was was being said around him, and what he didn’t understand he could deduce from his environment and body language.  The sharp consonants and dark vowels of Serbian grated on his ears.  The resentment he felt at having to learn the rudiments of it in under a week was always going to ruin it for him.  He added ‘learning new languages’ to the list of pleasures that Sherlock had spoiled.

“Kneel.”  The thug kicked at Sherlock.  “And give me your hands.”

His brother took his palms off the wall and collapsed to his knees.

“Please, please, please,” Sherlock implored in Serbian, voice hoarse from dehydration or screaming or some combination thereof.  “Don’t-chain-me-again-I-can-stand-I won’t sleep-I-promise.”

He buried his face against his captor’s thigh, sobbing against his leg, and quite deftly lifted the key to his manacles from the other man’s pocket as the oblivious gorilla peeled him off in disgust and manhandled his right wrist into a shackle.

Mycroft felt his lips quirk into a smile and conceded that had been nicely done.  He did wonder what exactly Sherlock expected to do once he picked his cuffs.  Well, if his last escape attempt was any indication, he would improvise.  And that had gone spectacularly poorly and had delayed Mycroft’s own plans to extract his brother by thirty-six hours.  If only Sherlock had just stayed put ….

In fairness, Sherlock probably had had no idea that Mycroft was coming for him.  He’d tried very hard to conceal his side mission from Mycroft.  If he hadn’t known that Sherlock was going to go after Maupertuis once they started taking out Moriarty’s contacts in Croatia, despite Mycroft’s explicit instructions that he be left alone, he probably wouldn’t have been watching for signs of Sherlock’s defection.  He’d become immediately concerned when his brother had stopped checking in and dropped off the grid, even though Sherlock had done it multiple times before.  It had taken him two days, though, to track Sherlock to the compound.

Lady Smallwood had made it eminently clear to him that the official position of Vauxhall Cross was that Sherlock Holmes was dead, and that, if he were discovered to be alive, the official position would be revised to say that he’d gone rogue and acted completely without the endorsement or knowledge of the British government.  So Mycroft had spent another four days putting together his extraction team, composed of Anthea and a handful of others who’d risked their jobs out of a sense of personal loyalty to him.  Then he’d taken point on the mission himself, and bankrolled the venture with his own capital.  He sincerely doubted his brother would bother to thank him.

The gorilla fastened Sherlock’s shackle to a chain connected to an eyelet in the wall.  He paused to glare at Mycroft before he walked behind Sherlock to secure his other wrist, and of course failed to observe the key that Sherlock had concealed in his palm.

Mycroft sighed internally at this so-called interrogator’s petty, petulant display.  He was here, ostensibly, to observe the proceedings and figure out where they were going wrong; of course the man resented him.  He’d arrived at the garrison in the guise of a security expert, sent to analyze how the compound had been breached and what could be done to prevent future break-ins.  Mycroft had spent the next two days ingratiating himself with the local garrison Captain, plying him with compliments and _rakia_ until the man mentioned they had a prisoner who had first broken into their compound and then tried to escape, whom they’d been interrogating and so far gleaned relatively little.  Mycroft asked them what they’d tried so far, which seemed primarily to be sleep deprivation and beatings.  He pointed out these were well and good for loosening a subject’s tongue, but of no use in ascertaining whether what was said had any value.  To make that determination, you needed either the intelligence to verify whether the subject was lying, or the observational skills to deduce it.  Mycroft had both of these in spades.  He’d proceeded to deduce everyone at the supper table, which did little to ingratiate him with the lower ranking officers, but convinced the Captain to allow him to sit in on the interrogation.

As soon as both wrists were secure, Sherlock leaned heavily into his chains, presumably grateful to be able to rest his arms, though Mycroft was certain the pressure on his wrists could not have been pleasant.  His brain unhelpfully supplied another image of Sherlock’s manacled wrists stretched above his head and fastened to a metal pipe.  A low thrum pulsed through his nerves, like a TENS unit set to the lowest setting.

The gorilla selected a worn leather strap, stained dark from apparent prior use, folded it in half, circling Sherlock and tapping it threateningly in his hands.  The zing in his veins began to throb.  He risked his cover if he protested over something as minor as this.  He’d seen his brother take a strapping--he’d seen him caned until his blood flowed-- he shoved that down, down ….

The strap cracked across Sherlock’s back.  He turned his body away from the blow, twisting his wrists in the restraints, but he did not cry out.  The strap came down again.  It was so strange, to be here, in the room, to hear the sounds resounding off the walls, almost to taste Sherlock’s sweat on the air.  It felt like being inside a fever dream, too real to be real; the lantern light on Sherlock’s striped skin created a sort of chiaroscuro, at once too dark and too vivid for verisimilitude.  He felt as though both he and his brother had been painted into one of the phantasms of Goya.

Crack, writhe, crack, writhe, and in between, questions grated in Serbian.  Mycroft watched, transfixed, as the blows knocked Sherlock from side to side, as he shook his head, oily locks falling in his face, refusing to answer or to scream, though the odd groan slipped past his cracked lips.  The infernal coat was too warm.  His skin felt hot and tingly, as though he’d smeared it with menthol.  He stared at Sherlock’s hand, the nails long and ragged, peering between his fingers at the faint gleam of the key.   _You got yourself into this mess, little brother, can you get yourself out of it?  Would it mean more to you if you did, if you could prove that you’re not a helpless addict anymore, that they can’t do as they will with you this time?_

The gorilla threw the strap to the ground, clearly frustrated with this method, and seized Sherlock by the hair, forcing him to lift his head.  He shoved the ‘v’ of his other hand up under Sherlock’s throat and squeezed, shutting off his air.  Mycroft sucked in his own breath.

After nearly a minute, Sherlock began to struggle, kicking wildly at his captor, who clenched his neck harder and viciously stomped on his bare toes.  Sherlock’s face contorted in agony, but he fought, driving his knee into the gorilla’s groin.  The thug threw Sherlock off of him, making him snap backwards into the chains, falling until his hyper-extend shoulders caught him.  For the first time, he cried out at the pain.

The sound snapped Mycroft back to himself.  He was sitting bundled in a fur hat and a wool coat in a cold cell where his half-naked brother was being tortured, and his trousers were too tight.  When had he become as sadistic as Sherrinford?  He felt sick.  The air in the room was awful, mold and damp and cigarettes on top of human waste and old blood and fear, some of it his own.  He needed to get out; he needed to get his brother out; he should have done that ages ago.

The gorilla was still bent double from Sherlock’s kick, pain and fury writ large on his face.  He straightened up, lips curled, nostrils flared, and strode to the wall where he kept his many crude implements of torment.  He snatched a length of lead pipe and swung at Sherlock, making contact with his kidney.

Sherlock screamed.

Mycroft strained for his brother’s words, but he couldn’t hear anything over the cacophonous roar of his blood within his ears.  What was  _wrong_  with him, that he should freeze at the moment Sherlock needed him?

The merc circled Sherlock like a shark, tapping the pipe it against his hand.

“You broke in here for a reason.”

Sherlock swayed in his binds, still silent.

“Just tell us why and you can sleep. Remember sleep?”  His fingers were white around the pipe; he clearly ached to use it again.

He couldn’t let this animal continue to strike his brother with this--he could break Sherlock’s ribs, fracture his spine---he tried to speak but found Serbian just beyond the reach of his tongue.

The gorilla drew back the pipe, eyes scanning Sherlock’s body for a vulnerable target--

Sherlock whispered something, and his captor stayed his arm.

Mycroft’s tongue loosened in his mouth at last, and he forced the gravely, Slavic sounds past his lips.  “Well, what did he say?”

He was ostensibly here to interpret Sherlock’s confessions, should he make any, after all.  He wondered if his brother had actually broken, if he would admit any part of the truth of his motives for taking down Maupertius.  His bowels cramped with guilt; Sherlock had come here searching for evidence that the corrupt garrison Captain was in Maupertuis’s employ, that they guarded the human cargo who were destined for slavery or appearance in his pornography.  Sherlock had come here to avenge his own rape, to prevent the torture he’d experienced being visited on others, and Mycroft had allowed him to be tortured again.

Tinnitus filled his ears; the gorilla was rattling off a series of deductions Sherlock had made about how he could catch his adulterous wife with some coffin maker if he went home now.  Mycroft stared after him as he fled with a touch of regret.  He would have shot the man had he stayed; the sidearm beneath his coat was fitted with a silencer and the sentry at the door was wearing ear buds--stupid.  It would have been satisfying to shoot him.

He stared at Sherlock, swaying in his chains.  He wanted to go to his brother and take him into his arms, to cradle and caress him and beg his forgiveness.

Instead, he reverted to Serbian, putting up the walls he kept between himself and Sherlock and his own wretched desire for him.  “So, my friend. Now it’s just you and me.”

He lifted his boots off the table and stood up, striding across the floor towards his brother.  “You have no idea the trouble it took to find you,” he said, staring at his back, ghastly under the yellow light, streaked with blood and livid with bruises.  The thrum in his nerves was back again, and, disgust welling in him as he did so, he allowed himself to twist his gloved fingers in Sherlock’s lank hair, to lift his head a little.  He brought his lips close to his brother’s ear, fighting the urge to kiss the spot where the lobe joined the jawline.

“Now listen to me,” he said in English, and then he was just relating the task, the mission; it seemed the only thing he could say to his brother without dissolving into a puddle of supplication at his feet.

“Back to Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes,” he finished.

To his joy and dismay, Sherlock  _smiled_.


	9. Part II: Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone. Sorry about the delay; I re-wrote this chapter four times before I was happy with it. I hope it's worth the wait. You know all the scary looking tags at the top of the fic? Most of that stuff happens in this chapter. You might like to take a moment to review them before proceeding.
> 
> UPDATE 08/24/15: The date has been changed on this chapter to correct a continuity error. The content of the chapter remains unchanged.

November 8, 2013

2:57 PM

 

“Let’s watch your favorite movie.”  Magnussen said with a smirk, pressing down on the remote, and an image of Sherlock’s wide blue eyes filled the screen.

Mycroft’s muscles clenched involuntarily around his finger.  He would not, could not, subject himself to this again, especially not in the presence of his enemy.  He kept his eyes open but let them lose focus, concentrating on going through the motions of preparing himself, working a second finger and more lubricant inside.

“No, no.”  Magnussen lifted his foot from the floor and placed it between Mycroft’s spread legs, pressing the tip of his Italian leather shoe against his scrotum.

Mycroft’s fingertips froze inside him.  He stared at the stitching of the leather, his breath catching.

“No moving your mind elsewhere.  Eyes on the screen,” Magnussen murmured.

The camera zoomed out from his brother’s face, revealing his slender throat, and then his torso.  His collarbones rose and fell sporadically, breath coming uneasily due to his wrists being encased in leather cuffs and attached by chains to a water pipe above his head.  

“Tell me what you see.”

The camera pulled back further, revealing the full length of Sherlock’s body.  He had been drawn up to the tips of his toes, which were stained grey from the grime on the floor.  His head lolled forward, his wild curls falling into his eyes.

“My brother.”

The pressure of Magnussen’s shoe against his bollocks sent jagged, red lines of pain up and down his legs and behind his eyes.

“You and your brother used to play a game, so I’ve been told.  One you always win.”

 _Deductions_.

“Play with me.”

Mycroft had analyzed the limescale on the pipe and the mildew on the walls in an effort to locate that basement (he had found it, eventually, with the help of the film’s metadata and several sources along the way).  None of these were of interest to Magnussen.

He cleared his throat.  “His inner elbows.  Someone’s tried to cover the track marks with foundation, but it only draws attention to them.  Pink undertones.  They should have gone with yellow to counter the purple of the bruising.”

“Yes,” Magnussen agreed.  “I would say he shot up before the shoot, too.  His pupils are quite contracted.  You’d expect them to dilate if he were aroused.”  He removed his foot from Mycroft’s lap and tucked it under the seat of his chair, pulling him closer.  He grabbed Mycroft’s chin with his clammy hands and tilted up his face.  “Are you aroused, Mycroft?”

“No.”

Magnussen nodded.  “But you were, the first time you saw the video.”

 _Never lie to an interrogator who already knows the answer to a question._ “At the beginning.”

“Even though you knew your brother was too high to consent?”

He considered telling Magnussen any one of the lies he’d told himself: that Sherlock had been so addicted at that point that he probably felt more normal high than sober, that his brother had chosen his lifestyle, that he had gone back, had done more films after this one.

“Yes.”

“How very interesting.  I myself am unconcerned with this detail.  But then I believe that the strong taking from the weak is the natural order of things.”

Mycroft felt the skin on the back of his neck tightening, and bitterness coated his tongue.

“You, on the other hand have … scruples.  You won’t hesitate to ignore conventional morality if you think your actions will bring about some greater good, but gratuitous violence offends you.”

Magnussen turned his head to face the screen, where a masked man--Danijel Zoric, they’d called him Danko--had moved behind his brother, wrapping a gloved hand around his throat.

“Wanton cruelty strikes you as unnecessary.” Magnussen opened one of the blond, wooden drawers beneath his glass desk and removed a black box. “Perhaps, even, as unnatural.”  He opened it and slid it across the desk to Mycroft.

Atop a red satin pillow lay an object clearly intended for insertion, though it was like no sex toy that Mycroft had ever seen.  The sculpted, copper colored silicone appeared to have been cast from a length of chain wrapped around a sinuous phallus; the outlines of the interlocking, stacked links created intimidating ridges around its length.

“It isn’t.” Magnussen continued.  “Man isn’t the only predator that toys with its prey for sport.  Orcas have been documented drowning other whales and eating only the tongues.”  He smiled, and removed the bottle of lubricant from Mycroft’s lap, setting it on the desk beside him.  “Hurt yourself.”

Mycroft suppressed a shiver and lifted the toy out of the box.  It was more than a foot in length, surprisingly soft, and swayed in his hands.  He wasn’t sure how anyone could take pleasure from such an object, though that was clearly its intended purpose.  He imagined that it required a great deal more preparation than Magnussen would allow.

Zoric tilted Sherlock’s body towards the camera, spreading his arse cheeks to reveal the base of a black rubber plug nestled between them.  He gripped one of Sherlock’s buttocks with one hand and the plug with the other, slowly pulling at the base and tugging at the bulb inside.  The black rubber stretched the rim of Sherlock’s sphincter as he worked the plug in and out of him, stretching and relaxing the muscle by turns until it wriggled free with a wet popping sound.

Mycroft pressed Magnussen’s toy against his own entrance, swallowing his acrid fear and bearing down.  The lubricant he’d spread on himself earlier was hardly enough to facilitate penetration by even a more conventional dildo.  He exhaled hard, forcing out his breath as he pushed the textured ridges past the resistance of his muscles.

The camera zoomed in on Sherlock’s arsehole, spread open by Zoric’s ragged thumbnails.  “Just look at that.  You’re so stretched out I bet I could get balls deep in one thrust.”  He unfastened the fly of his dark jeans and pulled his already hardening cock from his trousers with one hand while keeping Sherlock spread with the other.  His brother whimpered and arched his back.  

“I think you were still enjoying it at this point,” said Magnussen.  “You prefer the films in which you can’t see the faces of your brother’s partners, don’t you?”

The only films in Sherlock’s catalogue he’d ever allowed himself to get off to were the ones in which his brother was alone, pleasuring himself with toys or his own fingers.  He forced more of the toy’s length inside himself, struggling with the way the soft silicone buckled in his sweaty hands.

On screen, Zoric moved behind Sherlock.  The only parts of him visible were his masked face behind Sherlock’s shoulder, his gloved hand around Sherlock’s throat, and his booted feet on either side of Sherlock’s pointed toes.  He spread Sherlock’s legs with his own, making him stumble forward, then actually lifted him off the floor, pulling him back by the hips and down onto his cock in one swift motion.  Sherlock gasped, his bare feet flailing in the air as he scrambled for purchase.

Magnussen slapped Mycroft across the face.  The blow wasn’t actually that hard, but the sting of it got his attention.  “Answer me!  Do you like imagining it’s you, with him?”

He didn’t dare imagine himself with Sherlock.

Magnussen poked the base of the toy with his toe, pushing another inch of of it into him.  The friction of it burned, the tell-tale twinge of a micro fissure.  “Yes,” he stammered past the pain.  Subjects always lied, if they thought it would stop the pain.  He wondered if Magnussen would deduce his deception.

“Stroke your cock.”  Magnussen stood up, stepping behind Mycroft so he could observe from over his shoulder.  “I want you to come when your brother does.”

Mycroft divided his attention between Magnussen and the screen.  Zoric had set Sherlock down again, depressing the small of his back with one hand to keep him at the right angle while holding his hip with the other.  He snapped into Sherlock hard, and from his brother’s rapid gasps of pleasure he was clearly hitting his prostate.

Mycroft increased the pace and pressure of his strokes, rolling the ball of his thumb across his glans at each apex.

“May I come?” Sherlock asked.

“No,” Zoric snarled.

“You may,” Magnussen whispered in Mycroft’s ear.  “In fact, you had better.”

“Fuck,” Sherlock moaned.  “Please, please, please, please.”  His voice shook as Zoric’s thrusts forced the air out of him.

Mycroft wrapped his fingers tighter around his cock, twisting his foreskin the way he liked on the upstroke, and rocked the toy against his prostate.  He still found the texture uncomfortable, but the feeling of fullness was bringing him closer.

“Oh god, I’m sorry.”  Sherlock choked.  The camera panned down his body to his hips, zooming in on the white ropes spouting from his untouched cock.

“Eyes open,” Magnussen whispered, wrapping his fingers around Mycroft’s neck.

He obeyed, watching Sherlock spurt in time with Zoric’s thrusts, his own bollocks straining for the rising warmth just out of reach.  Magnussen pressed against his trachea, making his blood slosh against his eardrums.  Mycroft wrung the orgasm from himself, clenching his legs and his inner muscles so hard he pushed the toy out of him, his pleasure quickly aborted by the pain of the chain links sliding past his sphincters.

Magnussen’s beard brushed his cheek as he smiled.

Zoric shoved Sherlock forward, and he went sprawling, scraping the tops of his feet.  Only his chains, which clattered against the pipe, kept him from falling on the floor.

“What did I fucking tell you, slut?”

“I’m sorry, sir!”

Zoric circled around Sherlock, grabbed him by the chin, and spat into his face.  “That’s what I think of your ‘sorry.’”

Mycroft tried to swallow, and couldn’t.

Magnussen had yet to relieve the pressure on his throat.  His vision began to swim in front of his eyes.  “This is where it changes, isn’t it?”

Magnussen released him so he could speak, slapping him on the cheek again.

“Yes,” he croaked, then drew a greedy breath.

“He senses it, now, that he’s in over his head.  You always knew, but it doesn’t bother you until he does.”

He had known.  Greg had warned him; he’d seen Sherlock’s eyes, his arms.  But he’d tried hard to tell himself that the Inspector must have been especially vanilla; Mycroft had seen BDSM films before in which Sherlock appeared to be genuinely enjoying himself rather than feigning pleasure for the camera.  But the way Sherlock’s body tensed as he blinked spittle out of his eyes--calves tightening, ready to run, tendons standing out on his neck as his pulse fluttered--made it clear that his motivation in this scene was no longer pleasure or money but fear.

“Do you know what happens to sluts who come without permission?” Zoric demanded.

Sherlock nodded mutely.

“Say it.”

“They get punished.”

He chuckled.  “That’s right.”

Magnussen tapped his shoulder.  “Keep going.  I know that you also want to be punished.  How much penance does wanking to your brother’s pain merit?”

Mycroft grit his teeth, grasped the base of the toy, and pulled the few remaining inches out, then shoved it in again, ignoring the warning pain inside him.

Zoric walked off screen and returned with a fiberglass cane, about a meter long and five millimeters in diameter.

Sherlock’s eyes followed the cane’s motion as Zoric slid it along the length of his palm, circling Sherlock with apparent menace.  He tapped Sherlock’s chest twice for aim and then brought the cane down with a whoosh and landed a blow across both his nipples, snapping the wrist quickly back to deliver maximum sting.  Sherlock squirmed and curled his toes.  Zoric walked around him, dragging the tip of the cane along his body, stopping to strike at the sensitive flesh under his armpit with the very tip of the cane.  A red weal was already forming across his chest.

“Tell me something, Mycroft.”  Magnussen twisted his fingers in his hair.  “Were you beaten at Eton?  Was Sherlock?

“I--once.”

“Sherlock?”

“No.  The practice had been phased out by the time he matriculated.”  That wasn’t the question Magnussen really wanted the answer to, but Mycroft wasn’t about to offer.  Was Sherlock, presenting himself as fully as the chains would allow, demonstrating naivete or masochism?  Mycroft had seen videos in which Sherlock had been sensually caned before, but he suspected his brother had never had been beaten with one as punishment.

Zoric dropped to one knee to level himself with Sherlock’s arse, tapped the center of the buttock furthest from him once to aim, and then struck him with full force.

Sherlock stumbled, rattling his chains, but made no sound.

_He couldn’t let this animal continue to strike his brother with this--he could break Sherlock’s ribs, fracture his spine---he tried to speak but found Serbian just beyond the reach of his tongue._

A narrow band of skin on the swell of each of Sherlock’s cheeks opened, revealing skin equally white beneath, like score marks on baking bread.

The cane whistled came down parallel to the previous blow.  A new set of cuts appeared, and the first had begun to redden.

Sherlock groaned and leaned forward into the cuffs.  “Yellow,” his brother’s voice was shaking.  “I can continue, but no more with the cane.  Please.”

Mycroft’s eyes flew to Magnussen’s.  They glittered darkly.

“Ah, yes.  I forgot to mention.  This is something of a director’s cut.”

“I don’t think you understand,” purred a voice Mycroft had never heard before, off-screen.

Sherlock tilted his head, looking somewhere behind the camera.

‘You think we pay what we do, that our members pay what they do, for a little slap and tickle?”

“I--”

“This is a live shoot, and we’re not stopping it.”

Magnussen tapped Mycroft’s knee lightly with his hand.  “Neither are you.  Psychiatrists have recommended masturbation past the point of orgasm as a way of developing an aversion to inappropriate stimuli.”  He smiled, shark-like.  “I’m trying to help you, Mr Holmes.  Lusting after your brother is really quite deviant.  Terribly anti-social behavior.”

Another whistle-thud snapped his attention back to the screen.  

“Sir!”  

The new pair of marks bled immediately, the previous blows having increased the blood flow to the damaged skin.  The penetrating thud of the cane had mottled Sherlock’s arse purple, and the wounds that split over the bruises seeped like drooling mouths, trickling crimson.

The next cane blow struck low, in the tender skin of the sulcus.  

Sherlock screamed in surround sound.

Mycroft winced.  This was yet another display of power on Magnussen’s part, that all manner of noises could come from his office (or perhaps not, was it sound-proofed?) and no one would intervene.  Mycroft had only ever listened to this film with earbuds, and only ever watched on a laptop screen.  The sight of Sherlock’s torn flesh magnified until his wounds opened wider than the span of Mycroft’s hands was nauseating.  He felt as though the world had been turned inside out.  He’d gone from being in a world of goldfish to being in a fishbowl, and Magnussen was an enormous, refraction distorted cat, lazily dipping his paw into the water.

“Red!” Sherlock cried, then quieter, “stop the scene, please.”

Mycroft closed his eyes.

Magnussen flicked his eyelid.

He opened them again, and met Sherlock’s.  His brother looked directly into the camera.  “Whatever they’ve told you this is: fantasy, role-play, it’s not.”

The disembodied voice chuckled.  “What a tender little rabbit you are.  Our elite members pay a premium to see cunts like you figure out it’s not a game.”

Sherlock’s gaze hardened from pleading to enraged.  “You will regret this.”

“Not as much as you will, I’m sure.  Danko, take our willful slut down a peg.”

Zoric snickered behind his mask.  “Gladly.”

He unhooked Sherlock’s cuffs.

His brother struck out viciously; Mycroft felt a small surge of pride as he landed a blow on Zoric’s ear, but he caught Sherlock’s arm and pulled him heavily to his knees.  Sherlock snarled, teeth snapping, and was pushed back with a knee to the chest.  Zoric stepped over him, planting a boot between his shoulder blades to hold him down while two other men, also masked, pushed a table into the frame.  They helped Zoric haul Sherlock over it and secure his wrists and ankles to the legs.

“You’ve no idea what you’re doing,” hissed Sherlock.  “My family--”

“Has disowned you.  Or will,” sneered the voice behind the camera.  “Who’d claim a junkie queer like you?”

“Oh, the irony,” Magnussen turned towards Mycroft, a tiny smile playing at the edges of his mouth.  “That part gets me, every time.”

Mycroft grit his teeth.  He had certainly not forgotten that Magnussen was watching him, but he’d been absorbed enough in cataloging all the new information that he’d slipped from the forefront of Mycroft’s attention.

“I’ve had enough of this,” the voice continued.  “Gag him.  I need some usable footage from the final scene.”

One of the two figures from before reappeared with the red ball gag in hand, and the first man held his hair while the second forced the gag between his teeth.  They slammed his face into the table while tightening the strap behind his neck.  Sherlock glared at the camera.

Zoric leaned forward and whispered something into his ear while pressing two fingers into him.  Sherlock jerked beneath the touch, rattling the table legs.  Zoric patted him on the back, and stepped out of the frame.  Sherlock slumped in his binds, eyes falling closed.

The camera lingered on Sherlock for a few moments before Zoric walked back into the frame.  Mycroft remembered this bit from the final version.

“I certainly hope you’ve learned your lesson,” he drug his fingernails down Sherlock’s back, breaking skin, “and your place.”

Zoric opened his flies again and stroked himself to hardness while standing behind Sherlock’s exposed, abused buttocks.  The drool that had collected around the gag amplified the ragged sucking sound of his brother’s indrawn breath as Zoric lined up behind him.  He breached Sherlock brutally, in a single thrust as before, though Mycroft knew this time he would be tight from having clenched all his muscles during the caning.  Sherlock’s cries were muffled by the gag, but the table shrieked against the concrete floor, wooden legs scooting forward from the force.

“They actually did a decent job of editing,” Magnussen mused.  “The version with which you are familiar, the one they were going to publish on the other website, is passable, if you don’t look too closely, and who does, at these things?”

_I did._

Because no matter how much he hadn’t wanted to see it, he’d known.  To an unobservant, lust addled viewer, the noises Sherlock made could have been mistaken for the usual glossolalia that accompanied commingled pain and pleasure.  To Mycroft, who had learned to interpret Sherlock’s words spoken around mouthfuls of food, while underwater, sobbed into his pillow at night, the single syllable Sherlock was struggling to articulate around the gag came through as clearly as if his brother had shouted it into his ear.

“Red.  Red.  Red.”

He’d known.  From the beginning, he’d known, and still his body had responded.

_He felt blood drifting to his groin again, more insistent now that the heat of Sherlock’s body was pressed close._

Sherlock cried out into the table, which lurched beneath him.  His expression was distorted by agony and the gag--eyes squeezed tight, mouth pried wide.  His blood stained the black denim trousers of the man slamming into his wounded thighs.

_He brought his lips close to his brother’s ear, fighting the urge to kiss the spot where the lobe joined the jawline._

“Ah, but you’re aroused now, Mycroft,” murmured Magnussen.  He ran his fingertips down the length of Mycroft’s swelling erection and cupped his bollocks.  Then he squeezed.

Mycroft had never felt anything more welcome than the pain that bubbled up into his abdomen like lava, burning him clean.

“You need it, don’t you?” Magnussen crooned.

He nodded, too far gone to speak.

“Let me help you, Mycroft.  The idea here is to associate your fantasy with discomfort, to learn to direct your desire towards more appropriate objects.”  He touched his fingers to Mycroft’s hand, still curled around the toy.  “More.”

Mycroft pulled the toy partway out, feeling the chain links popping on the withdrawal, then leaned back in the chair, bracing himself, and twisted as he pressed it in again.

“That’s more like it.”  Magnussen turned the chair towards him with his toes, hooking them under the seat and pulling Mycroft closer.  He spread Mycroft’s thighs with the soles of his shoes.

Mycroft continued thrusting, stepping up the pace.  He dropped his gaze, unwilling to meet the colorless eyes fixed on him from behind rimless spectacles, and focused on the toy sliding in and out of him.  Although he knew the hand around it was his own, he felt detached from it.  A low, constant burning flamed within him, and he knew that if he were to examine the toy closely, the lubricant would be tinged pink.  He tried not to let it disconcert him.  He knew from experience that this could happen and was usually minor--some soreness for a few days, perhaps a spot of blood on his pants, nothing more.

“How many days do you think Sherlock spent lying on his belly?”  Magnussen prompted.

Mycroft twisted the toy, tamping down his own cry as his brother wailed.  He forced it in to the base, feeling something inside him tear.

_You were enjoying it.  Definitely enjoying it._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since my betas and some of the members of the Antidiogenes crowd who have been treated to snippits of this scene while it was in progress have asked about it, yes, the dildo referenced in this chapter is a real thing. It's manufactured by a company called Square Peg that makes a lot of unusually shaped insertables:  
> http://www.squarepegtoys.com/shop/chain-gang/
> 
> I unfortunately wasn't able to track down the video I saw about Orcas eating the tongues of other whales and leaving the rest of the carcasses, but I did find other references to them drowning other whales. Note that the article and videos linked to are graphic. Use your discretion:
> 
> http://www.wired.com/2013/04/orca-v-sperm-whale/?pid=6730&viewall=true
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lw8_SAtX8o#t=81
> 
> While I know in HLV Sherlock describes Magnussen as a shark, I think that he would consider an orca to be more analogous to himself.


	10. Part II: Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, updates will be coming a bit slower now as I've only got fragments and my outline at this point. But I'm plodding along, though I may not make my goal of finishing this fic by 221b Con.
> 
> Thanks again to beyonces_fiancee for the last minute beta, and for helping me answer one of the niggling unanswered questions in my own head about this story.

May 19, 2014

9:17 AM

 

Mycroft had let himself into 221 Baker St and was ascending the stairs to his brother’s flat when he encountered Janine, wearing what appeared to be Sherlock’s clothes (albeit of the variety he would only wear while undercover) on her way down.  He felt a drizzle of fear trickle down his spine at the sight of her.

“Oh, hi,” she said, extending her hand.  

He shook it, too startled to do anything else.

Sherlock’s dilapidated hoodie slid from one of her slim shoulders.  “You must be Myke.  Sherl’s told me so much about you.”  Her Irish brogue was stronger than usual.

“None of it good, I expect.”  The tension in his thoracic spine abated a bit as he played along.  “My name is Mycroft.  I’d appreciate it if you could struggle your way to the end.”

Janine shrugged.  “I’ll try, but I’m terrible with names.  Sherl had to coach me all through the wedding.”  She paused.  “Such a shame you couldn’t make it.”

He kept his face neutral.  Even after all this time, Mycroft found Janine frustratingly difficult to read.  Had she known he was at Magnussen’s penthouse last night?  Was this some kind of dig at him?  “Never much cared for them.”

“You could’ve at least sent a telegram.”  She dropped her voice lower, presumably to avoid Sherlock’s sharp ears.  “Even Charles sent a telegram.”

Mycroft could have sworn there was a note of fear in her voice, though whether Janine was afraid of the message itself, or was afraid she was being somehow disloyal by sharing it with Mycroft, he couldn’t say.

“Janine!” Sherlock bellowed from the sitting room.  “Is that my brother in the stairwell?  Tell him to go away.”

“You heard him.”  She smirked and cocked her head towards the door.  “You can escort me out.”

Mycroft patted the violin case he had tucked under his arm.  “I rather think he’ll be wanting this.”  

“You’d have done better to bring it over last night.”  There was a touch of retribution in her voice.

For a moment, he let the fury which lay hot and low in his belly show in his eyes, and hers widened in comprehension.  So she _hadn’t_ known where he was last night.  Or she was an even better actress around him than she was with his brother.  She seemed on the verge of saying something else, but Sherlock interrupted her.

“Leave the violin on the landing!”

“I shall do nothing of the sort.”  Mycroft continued up the staircase.  “You really ought to treat your belongings with more respect, Sherlock.”  

Janine turned sideways to let him pass.  It was still a tight squeeze, and their eyes met as they slid past each other.

“I know you’d rather it’d been you looking after him,” she said.  “But I did my best.”

He glanced down at Sherlock’s ratty hoodie and jeans, which, incredibly, fit her, albeit low on her hips.  She’d rolled up the cuffs, presumably to keep them from dragging, but also revealing the high heels she’d worn to John and Mary’s wedding.  The whole ensemble was incongruous.  “So I gather.”

“It’s not what you think.”

He did his best to look down his nose at her, which was admittedly a bit tricky with the two of them so close.  “I’m sure you’ve no idea what I think.”

“Haven’t the faintest,” she admitted cheerily.  “We mere mortals can’t be expected to comprehend what goes on in the minds of the Holmes boys.”

For a split second, Mycroft saw Irene Adler’s visage on top of Janine’s, as though viewing her through a transparency.  Of course.  The Woman had traded in secrets; she would have naturally have crossed paths with Janine and Magnussen.

“Nothing you need concern yourself with,” he said.  “I regret I must decline your request for an escort.  However, I’m more than happy to offer you the use of my car and driver if you don’t want anyone else to see you like that.”

Her grin broadened.  “Nice try.  Sherl says you’ve a habit of kidnapping people.”

“My brother has a habit of spreading lies about me.”

She smirked.  “I’ll try and remember that.”  Janine slid the rest of the way past Mycroft and descended the stairs, swaying slightly in her heels.  She opened the door to the street and paused to look back and call, “ciao, Mycroft Holmes,” before shutting the door behind her.

Mycroft continued up the stairs and through the food-safety nightmare his brother saw fit to call a kitchen.  He walked into the sitting room, and noticed that Sherlock had removed John Watson’s chair from its place in front of the fire.  He grimaced.

Sherlock lay sprawled across the length of his sofa, in pajamas and his mouse-colored dressing gown, his bare feet curled against the leather.  “Leave it, and then kindly remove yourself from my flat.”

Mycroft set Sherlock’s violin down on the table and then pulled the client chair out from underneath it.  He turned it to face the sofa and sat gingerly, poised on the edge of the chair, hoping his brother would deduce his discomfort as being psychological rather than physical.  “I was unavoidably detained last night.”

Sherlock shrugged.  “Have you finally started a war, then?”

“Something like that.”

Sherlock hummed, and put his hand out expectantly.

Mycroft sighed and removed the packet of cigarettes from his pocket and cracked the seal.  “I don’t know why I indulge you in this.”

“Because you love me.”

Mycroft smiled sadly as he shook a cigarette loose, placed it between his brother’s fingers, and sparked the lighter.   _More than you will ever know._

Sherlock inhaled deeply, then let the smoke curl from his nostrils.  “Menthols.  You do spoil me.”

Mycroft paused as Sherlock sucked on his cigarette.  He abstained, himself; he smoked only occasionally, and preferred low tar.  “Do I need to search your flat?” he asked.

“No,” said Sherlock.

“You know I will anyway.”

Sherlock flicked his cigarette into a crystal ashtray Mycroft recalled seeing at Buckingham Palace.  He must have lifted it while visiting during Irene Adler case.  How much younger his brother had been, even three short years ago.

“You won’t find anything.”  His brother huffed out smoke.  “I took everything I had last night.”

Mycroft briefly closed his eyes.  He thought of asking Sherlock if he’d made a list, what had been on it, but decided against it. This was the first time since their agreement, that Sherlock would make a list so that Mycroft could ensure he was appropriately treated, that he hadn’t shown up after.  Sometimes Sherlock had texted him, other times Mycroft had found him via informants or CCTV, but Mycroft always shown up, and he knew Sherlock expected he would.  This time, he’d let him down.  “I’m grateful that new friend of yours was here.”

“Janine?  She’s not a friend.”

Well, that was one less thing to worry about.

“We’re seeing each other.”  Sherlock shot a sideways glance at Mycroft while he inhaled.

“You’re not serious.”

“As an overdose.”

Mycroft glowered at him.

“I’m sorry, was that in poor taste?”  There was real rage underpinning the feigned annoyance in his brother’s voice.

He pressed his lips together.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t at the wedding, Sherlock.  And I’m sorry I didn’t stop by last night.  I truly was--”

“Unavoidably detained, so you said.”

“Yes.  But I could have sent ... Lestrade, someone ….”

“Lestrade was busy drowning his sorrows over his ex-wife and mooning after Molly Hooper.”

Mycroft raised his eyebrows.

“He could have her, if he just made a move.  Ring or no ring, anyone can see Molly can barely tolerate Tom the Meat Dagger.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow.  

“Never mind,” Sherlock muttered.  “The point is, Molly’s only staying because she’s too proud to admit she’s settling, so she’s doubling down on her mistake.”  

Mycroft pressed his lips together.  What he was going to say would hurt his brother, but his silence would hurt him more.  “Mary Watson is not Molly Hooper’s fiancé.”

Sherlock froze, cigarette suspended above the ashtray.  His eyes locked on Mycroft’s.  “And John is not Redbeard.”

Mycroft swallowed and looked away.

His brother narrowed his eyes at him, then stubbed the cigarette out and folded his hands under his chin.  He was silent for several minutes.  Mycroft considered prompting him again, or perhaps getting up and making tea.

“Why’d you bring him up, Mycroft?”  Sherlock asked.

Mycroft paused.  In truth, he hadn’t meant to mention Redbeard when Sherlock had made his last, desperate attempt to convince Mycroft to attend the wedding.  The parallels that had been on his mind of late would hardly make sense to Sherlock.  But he could see clearly now that that was where everything had started.  The night Sherlock had crawled into his bed, he’d made a choice, which had rippled through the rest of their lives, to push him away.  John Watson was doing something similar.  Like Mycroft, he was afraid and ashamed of his own desire.  Unlike Mycroft, he didn’t have a reason to be.

Mycroft had made the right choice.  He was certain of it.  He’d been scrutinizing all his decisions of late, especially those that had affected Sherlock, and he’d determined he would make most of them again.  The ones he would make differently, well, there was nothing to do but live with the consequences of his actions.

Mycroft had believed that the ends were more important than the means long before he’d read Machiavelli.  Of late, his life had become about _justifying_ them, which wasn’t about making excuses for his conduct, but achieving measurable results, doing quantifiable good or thwarting indisputable evil, forcing those who disagreed with him to admit the outcomes he attained were always preferable to the alternatives.  Mycroft believed in doing what was right, but he defined ‘right’ as ‘correct,’ rather than ‘morally acceptable.’ Certainly he tried to avoid doing wrong, but at the end of the day, he always did what was necessary.

Pushing Sherlock away had been necessary.  Lying to him about the reason he’d done it, and the reason he’d brought up Redbeard, was also necessary.

“I was trying to remind you that, in the face of the inevitable, the thing to do is to prepare yourself, and accept it with dignity.”

Sherlock closed his eyes, reciting, his voice flat.  “‘You let sentiment cloud your judgement and you saw a friendship because that’s what you wanted to see.’”

Mycroft winced.  He thought of his final chess match with Sherrinford, of how he’d replayed the entire game from memory to show his brother where he’d made his mistake.

“That wasn’t the part of the conversation which I intended you to recall.”  He sighed.  “I apologize, both for what I said then, and for what I said last night.  I didn’t mean to imply Watson’s friendship wasn’t genuine.”  Though it had become something darker since Sherlock’s return, tainted by betrayal.  It saddened him to see yet another of his brother’s relationships that had once been close twisted with anger and resentment.

“John isn’t dying, Mycroft.  And neither am I.”

“Though from what I gather, last night was a near thing.”

Sherlock shrugged.

Mycroft drew an unsteady breath, choosing his words carefully and keeping his expression mild.  “Was it accidental?”

“What else would it have been?”

Mycroft stared very intently at the cigarette packet that he was tucking back into his pocket.

Sherlock peered at him, searching his face for something, and then turned towards the ceiling.

Mycroft wondered what his brother had been looking for, and if he had found it.

“There was an attempted murder at the wedding,” Sherlock said at last.

“So I’d heard.”  He’d placed agents among the caterers who had briefed him on the attempt on Major Sholto’s life, but he had frustratingly few details.

“The intended victim had a sort of suicidal crisis and thought it might be better to oblige the murderer.”

Mycroft sat very still, scarcely daring to breathe.  Sherlock opened his eyes; the irises were colorless and the whites were shot with red.  “I told him, ‘we wouldn’t do that to John.’”  

He said the words like a mantra, as though he’d repeated them until he’d forgotten their meaning.

Mycroft took little comfort in them.

His brother closed his eyes again.  “It was wrong, you know.  Letting John believe I’d killed myself.”

“Ah.”  He supposed Sherlock laid that at his feet as well.  If it made it easier for him to forgive himself, so be it.  The decision to deceive Watson was one of those he’d make again.  John was Sherlock’s ‘rat,’ as his brother had described the targets he’d surveilled while trying to uncover the Underground terrorist plot.  If he had failed to act as expected, Moriarty’s remaining agents would have known that Sherlock was alive, and that would have made Sherlock’s mission, already risky, suicidal.  That had been and was still unacceptable.

“Mary asked me what I would have done, if I’d come back, and John had ….”

He noticed his brother couldn’t bring himself to finish.

“We were monitoring him closely, which included reviewing the notes made by his therapist.  I would have intervened if I’d considered it a serious possibility.”

Sherlock’s nostrils flared.  “The way you did with me?”

He glanced at his hands, folded in his lap.  “I suppose I deserved that.”

“Out.”  There was a flatness in his brother's voice; he was reciting again.

He cocked his head to the side, watching Sherlock replay the game again, in control this time.

“You heard me.  Out.”

Mycroft stood stiffly, keeping the pain off his face, and walked towards the door.  He hesitated at the entrance to the kitchen, wondering if this was how Sherlock had felt, sitting at the edge of Mycroft’s bed, hoping he’d change his mind and allow him to stay--but his brother hadn’t understood why he was being sent away.  Mycroft did.

“Go, Mycroft.”

He went.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, at this point in the timeline, we've caught up to "[A Spectre at the Feast](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2375066)." Actually, technically, that fic takes place right before this one, and it's written from Sherlock's POV. I would say it's better to read this chapter first because otherwise that fic might spoil it, but it could also be argued that this chapter spoils that fic. Anyway, if you'd like to know what Sherlock and Janine were up to before Mycroft shows up, I invite you to go read that story.
> 
> Update as of 06.14.15: This is now the end of Part II. I've expanded the scope of the fic and it will now be spread over four arcs instead of three.
> 
> Update as of 09.01.15 I lied. We need one more chapter in this arc.
> 
> Update as of 11.25.16. I lightly edited this chapter to make it TAB compliant. It was really bothering me.


	11. Part II: Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for bearing with me! It is such a relief to be posting this chapter and getting back into this story. It is now divided into four arcs. I decided Part II need one more chapter. This is it. Part III has five chapters, three of which are written, one of which is partially written. I'm not promising a specific posting schedule since my personal life is getting busy in the next few weeks and I want to finish Toplock Talent Search as well, but there shouldn't be any more dreadfully long hiatuses. 
> 
> Again, I'm so pleased that I haven't lost a single subscriber (I actually picked up a couple, bless you!) or if I have I got new ones and the count has balanced out. Thank you all for your faith in me and I Will Finish This Fic!
> 
> Enjoy.

December 5, 2013

2:51 PM

 

“Hello, Sherlock.  Did you miss me?”  Jim Moriarty’s grinning face filled Mycroft’s laptop screen.  The shot wobbled as Jim adjusted the camera; he appeared to have set up a tripod to film himself.  He stepped back away from the camera, revealing Kitty Riley’s apartment.  Jim sat on Kitty’s worn loveseat beneath her hodgepodge collection of artwork.  He wore a pair of ratty denims and a henley t-shirt with an oversized, wine-colored cardigan.

Moriarty settled into the couch, licking his lips.  “I thought this was an appropriate venue to film our little story hour.  Because I’m a storyteller, Sherlock, always have been.  Kitty’s hard at work writing one of my stories now.  A tragic tale of a sociopathic misanthrope’s descent into madness.  And the best part is, some of it is even true!  I consulted quite the authoritative source.  Your big brother told me so very much about you, Sherlock.  And about your other brother, too.  And let me tell you, Jacob and Wilhelm have nothing on you lot for _grim_.

“I was so inspired by your brother’s tale that I’ve put together a little book.”  He bent down, out of the frame, and returned with a leather-bound volume with gold foil lettering across the front.  He tilted it towards the camera so that Mycroft could read the title.

“The Ice Queen,” Jim read aloud.  Moriarty opened the book, revealing old fashioned pages with illuminated letters, clearly painted by hand on a book printed on a small batch press.  The inside cover was illustrated with a woodcut depicting a young, round-faced Mycroft, clothed in a foppish doublet, overlooking an ornate cradle framed by curtains.  A dark-curled baby lay within the cradle, a crown-embroidered blanket tucked beneath his chin.  The camera stayed on the pages, avoiding Moriarty’s face, but his voice came through, strained and gravely in a way that made Mycroft wonder if the audio had in fact been recorded at a different time, as Jim began to read.

 

* * *

 

 

August 3, 2014

7:58 AM

 

“Magnussen is not your business.”  Mycroft spoke slowly, firmly, holding Sherlock’s gaze.

“Oh, you mean he’s yours?”  His brother sneered.

Mycroft understood.  Whatever Sherlock thought Magnussen might have on him--Sherrinford, or perhaps something to do with Sherlock’s pornography career--he imagined that that Mycroft was appeasing Magnussen out of concern for his position, his reputation, that he was protecting himself and his power.  Sherlock thought he was a coward.

“You may consider him under my protection.”

Perhaps he _was_ a coward. Mycroft had considered the nuclear option: confess everything to Sherlock and throw himself at his brother’s mercy, Magnussen and his threats and promises and pressure points be damned.  If he were going to supplicate to anyone, it should be his brother.  However much Magnussen might pretend he was helping Mycroft atone for his sins, Sherlock alone had the power to shrive or condemn him.

Sherlock swayed into Mycroft’s personal space, taunting him.  “I consider you under his thumb.”

If he and Sherlock had been alone, Mycroft might have broken down and told Sherlock how very wrong and yet completely right he was.  He’d almost begun to wish his brother knew the truth.  But it had been a long time since the truth was the only thing he needed to keep from Sherlock.  Admitting the unnatural attraction that had come to taint the love he bore his brother, acknowledging that fear that his desires would be discovered (or that he would act on them) had driven him to pull away from Sherlock….

Once he would have deemed these topics unspeakable.  But after their conversation at the end of the Irene Adler affair, it seemed his awareness of Sherlock’s pornography was something they could acknowledge to each other.  He deeply loathed the idea of that aspect of his brother’s history being exposed to the scandal-starved tabloids, and he fully suspected Sherlock would not be pleased if John in particular were to see the Maupertuis film--but Lestrade had seen it, and as far as Mycroft could tell, the DI’s opinion of his brother remained unchanged.  The aftermath of that revelation would be miserable, but surmountable.

But now?  If Magnussen were to show Sherlock Moriarty’s ‘fairy tale,’ there was nothing Mycroft could say which his brother would believe.  There was no proof of any of the allegations that either Jim or Magnussen had made against him.  There was no cache of pornographic videos featuring Sherlock on Mycroft’s hard drive.  He hadn’t even heard the name Baron Maupertuis until Moriarty had mentioned it during his interrogation.  None of that mattered.  What mattered, was that Moriarty had known, and Magnussen now knew, the reason Mycroft had kicked Sherlock out of his bedroom the night Redbeard died: because he’d wanted him, even though he was his brother, even though he’d been a child.  Moriarty had set this terrible truth as the keystone supporting an architecture of lies, and if Mycroft were to share it with Sherlock now, he would pull all the stones down around their heads.

Instead, he adopted the tone Sherlock had once understood meant Mycroft wouldn’t be argued with, and told his brother, “If you go against Magnussen, then you will find yourself going against me.”

“Okay,” Sherlock quipped.  “I’ll let you know if I notice.”

Mycroft pressed his lips together and closed his eyes, pushing down the welling frustration.  

“What was I going to say?”  Sherlock continued.  “Oh, yeah.  Bye-bye.”  He opened the door and pointed out.  Sherlock was hamming it up for John, desperate to impress him.  If only John could have continued ignoring Sherlock’s spiral of self-destruction just a little bit longer, if only they had been alone, maybe, just this once, he could have persuaded Sherlock to listen to him.

“Unwise, brother mine.”

Sherlock wrenched Mycroft’s arm behind his back and flung him into the half-opened kitchen door.  He threw his palm out, fingers grasping the edge just in time to keep Sherlock from slamming his face into it.  Sherlock’s fingers twisted his forearm up between his shoulder blades.  He gasped in pain; Sherlock responded by increasing pressure on his hyperextended wrist and pressing his face against the door.  The sound of his joints popping overrode his brother’s ragged breathing.

“Brother mine, don’t appall me when I’m _high_ ,” Sherlock snarled into his ear.

Mycroft had imagined it before, Sherlock’s fury.  Physical violence was one of the many responses he thought he might expect from Sherlock in the event his secret were uncovered, and it was among the few he’d believed he could handle.  He’d told himself he would accept whatever punishment Sherlock saw fit to bestow, that he would endure it without reproach or complaint.  But he hadn’t counted on the force of his brother’s derision.  It was the tsunami of contempt beneath Sherlock’s words, not the pain oscillating along the nerves of his twisted arm, that made him want to sink to his knees.  Sherlock knew that Magnussen had Mycroft under his thumb, and he despised him for it.

John rushed to Sherlock’s side, suddenly eager to diffuse the tension he’d provoked.  “Mycroft, don’t say another word, just go.  He could snap you in two, and right now, I am slightly worried that he might.”

Mycroft bit his tongue to hold back the words _let him_.

But no, he was not going to be subjected to further humiliations in front of this repressed, willfully blind fool who had asked Sherlock to stand as best man at his wedding knowing full he desperately wanted to be the groom.  What Sherlock saw in this man who had spurned his friendship because had been discomforted by his unwisely displayed love, Mycroft would never understand.

Three years ago, he’d thought Watson might be the making of his brother, and then he’d watched him break him.  Only the knowledge that Sherlock would never forgive him kept Mycroft from destroying John’s personal and professional life.  His brother considered such interventions ‘meddling,’ and would not thank him.  Sherlock would never thank Mycroft for anything he’d done or would continue to do to protect or avenge him.

Sherlock relaxed his grip slightly, as though he’d just become aware of what he was doing, and Mycroft wrenched his arm free.  Residual twinges of pain shivered through the muscle.  He clutched it to his side and turned towards Sherlock, but his brother had already turned his back, dismissing him.  And that was the one response he knew without a doubt he could not bear: Sherlock shutting him out forever.

“Don’t speak.  Just leave.”  John transparently aped Mycroft’s earlier admonishment to his informal drug squad to ‘look frightened and scuttle.’

The irony of Anderson and his wife having more sense than Sherlock and Watson was clearly lost on him.

“Oh.”  John glanced at the floor at Mycroft’s umbrella.  Mycroft hadn’t remembered dropping it, but he supposed he must have done.  John picked it up and held it out with a polite cough.

Mycroft wondered if John would be surprised if he smashed his face in with it.  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d used his umbrella as a weapon, and if John paid attention to his supposed ‘combat instincts’ instead of swallowing the pap Sherlock fed him about Mycroft being an overweight bureaucrat, he might have noticed.  Then again, John hadn’t noticed that Sherlock was doing drugs or that there was a woman in his bedroom, why should he notice that Mycroft was entirely capable of killing him?

He hoped that, now that Watson had witnessed Sherlock’s relapse, even if he were unable or unwilling to accept that he personally was the cause, that he could rely on his medical professionalism to help Sherlock maintain his tenuous grip on sobriety.  John’s affection for Sherlock had become muddled with his anger at Sherlock’s betrayal and his fear of Sherlock’s sentiments, leaving Mycroft to rely on his sense of doctorly obligation and middle-class guilt.  Mycroft squared his shoulders, snatched his brolly, and strode out of Sherlock’s flat.

 

Mycroft’s car was waiting for him at the kerb outside 221b.  He opened the door and slid into the back seat, wincing as his hand made contact with the leather and pain shot up his arm.

Bradley glanced into the rearview mirror.  “Are you alright, Mr Holmes?”

“Fine, thank you.  Tweaked my shoulder a bit at the gym.”

Bradley nodded.  “I bet one of my mates I could bench what I did in uni a few years back.  Lost in more ways than one.”

“I sympathize.”

The dramatic strains of “ _Già, mi dicon venal_ ” sounded from his pocket.  Mycroft took out his phone with a grimace, and not from the way his arm twinged beneath his suit.  He slid his thumb across the phone and silenced Scarpia.  “Yes?”  He shot a glance at Bradley, who nodded and rolled up the partition which separated them.

“I’ve been advised you are just now departing Baker Street,” crooned Magnussen.

By Janine, no doubt.  Damn her.

From Sherlock’s unwillingness to open his bedroom door, Mycroft deduced that Janine had spent the night at his brother’s flat--and that Sherlock had yet to mention his new ‘relationship’ to Watson.  Sherlock himself had not been home when Mycroft had arrived--ergo, Janine had a key, and yet, Sherlock had been seen to be frequenting drug dens.  He’d initially hoped that Janine might look after Sherlock on danger nights in Watson’s absence.  However, it appeared that after nursing Sherlock through his initial relapse and overdose, she had since either given up or was actively enabling him.  Janine was also likely responsible for news of his brother’s addiction having reached Magnussen.  Perhaps she was spying on Sherlock for Magnussen, or perhaps his brother was attempting to use Janine to relay information, which Mycroft considered a grave error.  Janine was too cowed to deliberately defy Magnussen, and too clever to inadvertently betray him.

“I have spoken with my brother as you requested,” he confirmed to Magnussen.  He considered mentioning he’d left a negotiation for a ceasefire in Gaza in order to do so, but thought better of it.

“And do you think you have convinced him to abandon his alliance with Lady Smallwood?”

Mycroft pursed his lips.  “I have done my best.  It may not be enough.”

“I do not deal in maybes, Mycroft.”

He took a breath, careful to ensure it wasn’t too deep, too shallow, pushing the unwelcome memories from his mind.  “Sherlock is, at best, unpredictable, Mr Magnussen.”

“You think so?  I find he is quite the creature of habit.  His relapse seemed almost inevitable.  One hopes it doesn’t portend a return to other old patterns.  It would be such a shame for him to become caught in a--what is the expression--‘negative feedback loop?’

“The truth about your brother, Mycroft, is that he’s not actually a junkie--at least not in the traditional sense.  Sherlock’s true addiction is to attention: John Watson’s, yours, mine.  Getting caught in a drug den was something of a hat trick; he now has all three of our focus.  John Watson is concerned about Sherlock’s drug use and his new girlfriend.  You’re concerned about his newfound interest in my dealings with Lady Smallwood.  I’m concerned he may break into my office in an attempt to simultaneously thumb his nose at you and woo John Watson.  I do hope, for both your sakes, that you are able to rein your brother in.  It would be decidedly inconvenient for you if Sherlock were caught, and you were obliged to cover for another of his criminal indiscretions.”

Magnussen was not Mycroft’s intellectual equal, but he had a keen eye for weakness, and it unnerved him to have it turned on his brother.  “I agree.”  And he did, with the entirety of Magnussen’s assessment.

“I’m glad to hear it.  And now, I believe that you must return to attempting to negotiate peace in the Middle East--a Sisyphean task if there ever was one--and I have a meeting to attend.”

Mycroft heard the dismissal in his tone.  “Good day, Mr Magnussen,” he said, and disconnected.

 

* * *

 

 

August 3, 2014

8:11 PM

 

Mycroft stared at the the grainy image of the woodcut on his laptop screen, which jumped as Jim moved the book closer to the camera.  The print depicted a cutaway section of an anatomical heart; Sherlock’s and Mycroft’s naked bodies stood entwined within its chambers.   

“The End,” sang Moriarty, and slammed the book cover shut.

Jim stood up from Kitty’s sofa and walked into the frame.  “Well, that concludes story hour, Sherlock.  I hope today’s tale has been … informative.”  He leered into the camera.  “I did consider having Kitty type it up, but I thought it’d be such a terrible way for you to find out the truth about your brother--reading it in the papers.  Just think how Mummy and Daddy would cry.”  He grinned.

“Anyway, if you’d like to have a chat about it, love, you have my number.  I’m guessing you think I owe you a bit of an explanation.”  He giggled.  “Or maybe, The Ice Man does.  But that’s your problem, Sherlock, not ours.  I.  Owe.  You.  Sherlock Holmes.  And I shall catch you later.”  He waved, then reached behind the the camera and switched it off.  The video showed a brief burst of static, then black.

Mycroft wasn’t sure why he kept watching this video.  It wasn’t as though Magnussen were making him, like he did the Maupertuis film.  Magnussen had never even spoken to him about this video; the DVD on which it was burned had simply arrived by courier, signature required, in December of 2013, shortly after he had asked Lady Smallwood for permission to interrogate Moran with regards to Magnussen.  The threat had been perfectly clear, and Mycroft had been very careful to avoid doing anything that might possibly be construed as moving against Magnussen for several months.  He hated himself for having become so complacent, but Magnussen had made it easy, not making any demands on him, lulling him into a false sense of security, until Lady Smallwood’s office had begun gathering intelligence in preparation for the inquiry.  Then, suddenly, he’d wanted Mycroft to be on his side.

Mycroft found himself re-starting the video.

“Hello, Sherlock.  Did you miss me?”

The thought of Sherlock watching this….  Even though Sherlock knew that Moriarty was a liar, Jim had a way of getting under people’s skin.  At the very least, his narrative would plant seeds of doubt, which would grow like invasive weeds, choking out whatever trust or affection remained between them.

The video had almost made Mycroft doubt himself, sent him racking his brain in search of subconscious motives.  He was unsure how intensely Sherlock would be affected, but he feared that, with all of the bad blood now between them, his brother would be predisposed to think the worst of him.  He might come to believe Moriarty’s lie--that Mycroft had orchestrated Sherlock’s run-in with the Maupertuis ring as part of an elaborate scheme to coerce Sherlock into going to rehab.  Even worse, Sherlock might begin to doubt his own memories, to look into their early childhood for an explanation of his own unhealthy relationship with sex, to imagine Mycroft had molested him when they were children.

Mycroft pressed his forehead into his palms, fingertips massaging the spots of pain blooming around his eyes.  His phone rang.

For a single, deranged moment, he expected Jim on the other end of the line.

_Dear me, Mr Holmes, dear me._

But that was absurd.  Moriarty was dead, and anyway it was Watson’s ringtone.  He answered it.

“Mycroft.”  John’s voice was raw, urgent.

A siren wailed in the background.

He clenched his fingers around his phone.  “What has befallen my brother, Dr Watson?”

“Sherlock’s been shot.”

 

END OF PART II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft’s ringtone for Magnussen, “ _Già, mi dicon venal_ ,” is an aria from Act II of the opera Tosca.  Links to a [synopsis of the opera](http://www.opera-arias.com/puccini/tosca/synopsis/), an [excerpt of the libretto with both the original Italian and the English translation](http://www.opera-arias.com/puccini/tosca/gia-mi-dicon-venal/) and a [Youtube clip of the scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG0epsDq_cM) are below.  Note that the scene depicts an attempted rape.
> 
> I would also like to offer special thanks to Ariane de Vere for her [transcript of His Last Vow](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/67234.html).  


	12. Part III: Chapter One

August 3, 2014

11:46 PM

 

“He’s still in surgery.”  Watson paced the private hospital room furiously, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“How badly is he injured?” asked Mycroft.

John froze, then wheeled on his heel and began pacing again.

Badly, then.  Mycroft’s hands were tingling.  He perched on the edge of one of the wretched waiting room chairs.

“He was shot in the liver.  Which, all things considered, is one of the better places to be shot in the torso. The bullet missed his heart, lungs, diaphragm.  Whoever shot him had piss-poor aim.”

Or hadn’t intended to kill Sherlock. Only wanted to frighten him perhaps, put him off the Magnussen case.  Still, the set of Watson’s jaw told him that John was far more concerned for Sherlock than his words implied.  “But?”

John squared his shoulders, turned, paced again.  “He was doing okay in the ambulance.  I was doing CPR; the bullet was keeping pressure on the wound, but once they got him into surgery….  I tried to see what they were doing, but … I don’t have privileges…. they won’t-- _damn_ my shoulder,” Watson snapped, whirling on him.  “If I hadn’t been … if I could still ….”

“You’d never have met my brother if you hadn’t been invalided home from Afghanistan.”  

“I know.  I get that.  I just--they made me leave him, Mycroft, just like at ….” he shook his head.  “His blood pressure was tanking.  I think the bullet nicked the IVC.  That’s the--”

“Biggest vein in the body,” finished Mycroft.  Overseeing enhanced interrogations had required him to learn some basic anatomy.

“They were hanging more units, but he was still bleeding.  And then they pushed me out of the OR and no one will tell me fucking anything.”

“You think he flatlined.”

John nodded.  “They were giving him adrenaline and performing CPR when I left.  But Sherlock is tough.  He’s still young, strong ….”

The odds of surviving cardiac arrest were approximately one in five.  Sherlock was eating and sleeping irregularly and shooting cocaine and heroin.  All of which put strain on his heart.  Even assuming they could get it beating again, he might survive only to suffer irreparable brain damage.

“ _No_.”  John shook his finger in Mycroft’s face.  “I know what you’re thinking.  You and Sherlock are both fucking machines, calculating the odds--Sherlock is not a statistic.  He won’t--he can’t--I’m a bloody trauma surgeon!” John was shouting now.  “I served in Afghanistan!  I’ve seen more men in cardiac arrest than I want to remember, and I’m telling you it _happens_ , Mycroft.”  A nurse walked past, and John paused, waited until she’d moved along, then started again, his voice lower this time.  “Not often, but it happens.  People come back.  Sherlock will come back.”  John resumed pacing.

Mycroft nodded, struggling to control his breathing.  He slumped back into his chair.

“Sherlock’s a fighter.  He’ll pull through, they just ….  They can’t give up on him, Mycroft.  Please let me tell them that.  Surely you have connections, strings you can pull ….”

Mycroft shook his head.  John in this state would only distract the medical team.  “Sherlock is getting the very best of care.  You’d be of more use to him if you tell me everything that happened tonight.”

John stopped pacing, jaw working as he folded his arms across his chest. “Right.  Okay.”  He glanced furtively at the door to make sure the hallway was clear.

Mycroft refrained from rolling his eyes.  Watson was a military man. Surely he’d seen that the men who had come in with Mycroft and were now posted at either end of the hallway were armed, even if they were in plainclothes.

“We broke into Magnussen’s office to steal some letters.”

Mycroft nodded.  “Lord Smallwood’s correspondence with his … sweetheart.”

“I suppose.”  John frowned.  “Sherlock never said what was in the letters, just that Magnussen was using them to blackmail Lady Smallwood and that he had them on his person.  He showed them to us when he was at the flat--”

“Magnussen was at Baker Street?”  Another wave of adrenaline flooded his nervous system, and sweat beaded beneath his vest.  Contrary to what Magnussen would have Sherlock believe, Mycroft didn’t have any cameras at his brother’s flat.  He had the CCTV in the vicinity of the street monitored, but it didn’t surprise him that someone as familiar with cameras as Magnussen had managed to evade them.

John shook his head.  “Oh, yeah.  He _pissed_ in the _fucking_ fireplace.  Can you believe it?”

Mycroft suppressed a wince.

“But Sherlock was more interested in the letters.  He said Magnussen showed them to us because he meant to make a deal.”

Mycroft sincerely doubted that, but thought it prudent to listen rather than speak.

“But Sherlock didn’t want to deal.  He thought he could steal the letters while Magnussen was at dinner.  Sherlock claimed he knew Magnussen’s schedule, and that he was supposed to be out from seven until ten.”

Janine.  In her police statement, which Anthea had sent to him, Janine had admitted to letting Sherlock into Magnussen’s private lift, and said she had been struck from behind immediately afterwards and had no recollection of anything until the paramedics arrived.  Had Janine lured Sherlock to CAM headquarters at Magnussen’s behest?  If so, Magnussen could hardly have known about the gunman.  If Sherlock died, Mycroft would become a man with nothing to lose and nothing to live for; surely Magnussen had to understand that sealed his own fate?  No, Magnussen was innocent--of Sherlock’s attempted murder, at least.  Janine, however, might not be.

“Janine said she was unconscious at the time of your arrival.  Is this true?”

John shook his head.  “No.  Though it’s possible she might not remember; concussions can cause amnesia, and she was pretty groggy.  She was groaning when I got to her, though.”

Mycroft nodded.

“Wait--did she specifically say that--our arrival? Or _Sherlock’s_ arrival.  Because she oughtn’t have seen me.  Sherlock made me stay out of range when he talked to the camera.  Do you think she’s lying?”  John’s hands balled into fists.  “Did she see who shot Sherlock?”

“It’s possible Janine merely inferred you arrived with Sherlock because you were in the office when she regained consciousness.  Let’s not theorize ahead of the facts.”

Personally, he was convinced that Janine knew who Sherlock’s assailant was.  Even if she hadn’t arranged the encounter, which was a possibility he still hadn’t ruled out, most of Magnussen’s office was glass.  She had to have seen a reflection.  But the last thing he needed was John Watson turning vigilante on him.

“Does Janine wear _Claire de la Lune_?” asked John.

Mycroft arched an eyebrow.

“Never mind.  That was stupid.  She and Sherlock were … dating.  I guess he would know what perfume she wears.”

“He smelled it?”

“Yeah.  When we first came in.  He asked who wore it.  I told him Mary wears it, but he said it was someone else.”

Lady Smallwood.  She must have been in the room before Sherlock’s arrival.  Though why she would meet with Magnussen herself when she’d enlisted Sherlock to do so on her behalf remained unclear.  He ached to confront her, but she wasn’t returning his calls.  He gritted his teeth.  It would do no good if he did the very thing he was trying to prevent Watson from doing.  He needed more facts.

His text alert beeped at him.  Anthea.  At last, he might have actual data.

 

> Something you should know about Janine Hawkins.  One of the men we recruited after the Serbia mission recognizes her.  She was living in one of Maupertuis’ brothels in 1996.
> 
>  

He stared at the message before typing a reply.

 

> Is he certain?  I imagine she must have looked very different, then.
> 
>  

His phone chimed again.

 

> He is confident, but says that if you want confirmation, she has a blacklight ink tattoo on her upper back.
> 
>  

Mycroft suppressed a smile.  Months and months, and finally, the first thing resembling a break.

“What is it?” asked John.

“A possible lead,” said Mycroft.  “Nothing concrete, though.”

He typed a quick message back to Anthea.

 

> Arrange a meeting with Ms Hawkins.  The sooner the better.  And see if you can figure out where Lady Smallwood was between 6 and 8 this evening.
> 
>  

So Janine had been a Maupertuis girl.  At fourteen or fifteen, if he was guessing her age correctly.  And she’d survived.  He had new respect for her.  And he suspected what Magnussen might have on her, that her story might actually not be so dissimilar from Sherlock’s.  He wondered if his brother had any idea.

He wondered if he would have the opportunity to ask him.

 

* * *

 

August 4, 2014

7:46 AM

 

Mycroft sat in the vinyl covered chair next to Sherlock’s bed, eyes closed, listening to the steady beat of Sherlock’s heart rate monitor.  His brother’s heart had spontaneously restarted after flatlining.  The lead surgeon had said something about how that sometimes, stopping chest compressions allowed for the heart to dilate and fill with blood, which then began pumping on its own.  Mycroft had seen the surprise, the relief, in his eyes, though.  He’d stopped the compressions because he’d given up Sherlock for dead.  And then Sherlock had auto-resuscitated.  The so-called Lazarus Effect.

_Lazarus is go._

Sherlock had died and come back to life for John Watson again, and for real, this time.  Not that Watson had any idea.  He was sleeping curled in a chair against the far wall, snoring softly every few minutes.  He was bound to have a crick in his neck when he woke.

Mycroft had since come to regret having asked his brother if he was to expect a happy announcement by the end of the week after John had so instantly befriended him.  It had been a joke when they had both believed Sherlock wasn’t the marrying kind.  And then he’d seen the photos of John and Sherlock in their matching morning suits, hats tucked in the crooks of their elbows, the contented smile on John’s face and the serious, earnest expression on Sherlock’s, and Mycroft’s joke had become decidedly unfunny.

Sherlock’s pale fingers twitched against the sheets.  His body looked small beneath them.  The baggy hooded jumper and joggers Sherlock had worn when Mycroft had last seen him had concealed the amount of weight he’d lost.  Clad in only a hospital gown, Mycroft could see how lean Sherlock had grown.  It was disconcertingly reminiscent of the way he’d looked before entering rehab.

Sherlock missed a breath.  Mycroft held his until the BiPAP machine breathed for his brother.  Objectively, he knew Sherlock’s breathing was improving; that he took most of his breaths on his own and the machine was just supporting him until he woke.  Still Mycroft’s armpits felt swampy, even though he’d draped his jacket over the back of his chair, and his collar was strangling him.  He unfastened his top button beneath his tie and took deep breaths, synchronizing his own rhythm to Sherlock’s.  His waistcoat was new.  He’d picked it up from the tailor’s two weeks ago; it was not too tight.

He knew that his physical reactions were the result of anxiety.  He’d made himself stop counting each mechanical breath two hours after they removed Sherlock from the ventilator, but the tight feeling in Mycroft’s chest and fingertips hadn’t gone away.  Quite possibly, if he asked the staff for something, he could get a prescription, but he intended to be lucid when his brother regained consciousness.

Not for the first time, he debated reaching across the space between them and taking Sherlock’s hand, threading his fingers around Sherlock’s wrist so as not to disturb the oximeter.  But Watson was a light sleeper, and Mycroft was unwilling to risk even casual intimacy.  Instead, he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the velvet box inside, turning it over in his palm and opening it to reveal a rather ostentatious engagement ring.

The stones weren’t even real diamonds; Sherlock had clearly never intended for Janine to see the ring up close.  It had been meant to get him past the camera outside Magnussen's private lift, and no further.  But he hardly needed the ring to tell him that.  And if Watson had needed Sherlock to tell him that he’d only proposed to Janine to break into Magnussen’s office in order to understand the entire relationship had been a sham, then he was willfully blind.

His text alert buzzed.  Anthea again.

John shifted in his chair, then blinked at Mycroft blearily.

Damn, he should have put his mobile on silent.  He slid the volume bar to mute.

 

> Miss Hawkins is in custody.  Lady Smallwood was at a small private dinner celebrating the success of the Gaza negotiations.  Multiple witnesses.
> 
>  

So much for that theory.  Mycroft found himself both frustrated and relieved.  He would have to rely on Janine for answers.

“Any news?” John asked.

“Perhaps.”

“Go,” John urged.  “Find out who did this to Sherlock.  I’ll call you as soon as he wakes.”

Mycroft hesitated.

Another text came in, silent this time, from an unknown number.

 

> Just imagine how guilty you would have been if your brother had died attempting to retrieve Lady Smallwood’s letters.  To think, if you had succeeded in getting him to stay out of my affairs, all might have been prevented.
> 
>  

He stared at the message, heart racing, then deleted it.  He was not looking forward to conducting an interrogation knowing he could be summoned away at any moment.  Perhaps it would be better to wait until after Magnussen was … finished with him.  If he stayed now, he might be with Sherlock when he regained consciousness.

“He’s going to make it, Mycroft,” said John.  “He gave us a scare, I know.  But he’s stable.  He just needs to sleep off the anaesthesia.”

He pressed his lips together.   _I need to speak with him when he wakes.  Make certain he’s still Sherlock._  But there was nothing he could do even if he wasn’t, so why linger?  Magnussen might call him away from Sherlock’s bedside in any case.  He tapped a reply to Anthea.

 

> Warm up for me.  I’ll be there in two hours.
> 
>  

He shoved his phone back in his pocket, standing slowly and smoothing the worst of the wrinkles from his suit.  He’d need to change and collect himself before interrogating Janine.  And prepare himself in case--but he couldn’t think of that, now.  Couldn’t afford the distraction.

“Thank you, John.  Please--look after him.”

Watson smiled, a sad, tight thing beneath his swollen eyes.  “Of course.  I’ll tell him you were here.”

Mycroft’s smile was equally brittle.  “Perhaps it’s best you didn’t.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> This chapter relies heavily on the below metas written by wellingtongoose:
> 
> [How Sherlock Survived His Heart Stopping - A Medical Analysis](http://wellingtongoose.tumblr.com/post/75415111199/how-sherlock-survived-his-heart-stopping-a)
> 
> [Why Mary Did Not Intend to Kill Sherlock and Why Sherlock Forgave Her So Readily](http://wellingtongoose.tumblr.com/post/74878096422/why-mary-did-not-intend-to-kill-sherlock-and-why)
> 
>  


	13. Part III: Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I know I promised you all Magnussen for Halloween, but my beta beyonces_fiance and I agreed that this chapter needed to come before that one. So, scary as that would have been, you'll have to wait a couple of weeks for more Magnussen. Instead, we have Mycroft and Janine, who are each scary in their own way, I suppose.

August 4, 2014

9:52 AM

 

“Hello, Myke.”  Janine’s voice echoed off the walls of the warehouse where Mycroft had met with John Watson five years ago.  He strode across the floor, brolly in hand, nodding to Anthea and the guards that stood at parade rest on either side of Janine, who was handcuffed to a chair bolted to the floor.  Her upturned face was white from the floodlights which concealed Mycroft, but her expression was calm.  “This isn’t necessary.”

“Isn’t it?” asked Mycroft.  “You know who shot my brother.”

She smiled.  “Yes, I do.  And I’m willing to tell--for a price.  Let’s please get these off,” she rattled her cuffs against the chair, “and have a chat about that, like reasonable people.”

“Uncuff her.  And give us the room.  I think we’ll be quite fine with you outside the bay doors.”

Each of the guards unlocked one of Janine’s wrists.  The half-opened cuffs clattered against the metal chair legs.  Janine folded her hands in her lap, absently rubbing her wrists.

“Cut the floodlights on your way out,” Mycroft instructed his men.  Anthea turned to follow.  “Please stay.”

Anthea nodded and stood to one side of the chair.

“Take off your blouse,” he instructed Janine.

She rolled her eyes.  “Does nobody believe in foreplay anymore?”

“You know exactly what I want, and it isn’t that.”

Janine stood up, turned her back to him, and unbuttoned her blouse. She brushed her mussed hair forward and tilted her head down, exposing the back of her neck.

He nodded to Anthea, who took her key fob out of her handbag and switched on a small blacklight, shining it on Janine’s upper back.  A tribal design, something between a Celtic knot and a Pakistani mandala, lit up blue on the surface of her skin.

“Thank you,” said Mycroft.  “Put your blouse back on, now.”  

Janine turned around and winked at Anthea, who raised an eyebrow, as she buttoned up.

“You may leave us,” Mycroft told Anthea.  He didn’t believe Janine posed a physical threat to him.

Anthea’s brows furrowed, but she nodded, collected her bag, and left the room, already texting before she was out the door.

Mycroft waited until Anthea was out of earshot before he continued.  “It was foolish of you to get a tattoo, you know.  Identifying marks are a fugitive’s worst enemy.”

She shrugged.  “I was fourteen.”

“So I’ve heard.  Such an impressionable age to have taken up with the likes of Baron Maupertuis.”

“I was more mature at fourteen than your brother was at twenty-one.”

He smiled, letting the jibe roll off him.  “I don’t doubt it.  What about _your_ brother?  How mature was James Moriarty at twenty-two?”

Janine giggled behind her hands, then applauded.  “Oh, _well done_!  There’s the Ice Man Jim promised me.  I’d started to think it was all hype.  Though of course if you figured out that much you know ‘Moriarty’ isn’t my family name.”

“No, you were born Islene Noorani.  But you’ve taken to calling yourself ‘Moriarty’ in recent months.  In certain circles.”

“Easier to build a brand with name recognition,” she quipped.

“You never used it when your brother was alive.”

“I always thought it was safer for people not to know we were related.  What tipped you off?”

“The agent who recognized you told us all Maupertuis’ girls indicated you were Moriarty’s ‘particular favorite.’  I never believed that for a second.  Jim was--”

“Queer as a clockwork orange?”

“Not how I would have worded it, but yes.  You’re James Moriarty’s half sister.  Your mother was Bevin Noorani, formerly Moriarty, nèe Query.  Yasir Noorani was your father.  He left when you were still an infant and Jim was six; your brother ran away when you were ten and he was sixteen.  You must have resented him leaving you in that house with your alcoholic mother.”

Janine showed a smile that was all teeth.  “You sure you want to talk to me about resenting your big brother, Mikey?”

He ignored her.  “Bevin Query and her daughter died in a house fire in 1994.  Except you didn’t die in that fire.  Your brother altered the records.  And he brought you back to Dublin with him after the funeral, such as it was.  Because you’d proved yourself to him, shown him how very grown up you were, covering a murder up with arson at only fourteen.  Except Jim was thirteen when he killed the Powers boy.  He still beat you by a year.  Maybe that’s why he left you in Serbia for two years while he built a criminal empire.”

Janine leaned back in her chair and twirled her hair with her fingers.  “I’ve no idea what you’re on about.  Our mum was drunk and forgot she left her space heater on.”

“You should know I’m not in the habit of negotiating with people who lie to me, Ms Moriarty.”

“Call me Janine, please.  There’s no need to be so stuffy.  And if you can compromise your high moral standards just a bit and hear me out, I think we could be friends.”

He lifted one eyebrow.  “Friends.”

“Ah, that’s right, you Holmes boys don’t have friends.  Partners, then.  We’re almost on the same side of the negotiating table.”

“Almost?”

“I’d still like to hammer out some of the finer details.”  

“Such as?”

“Come on, Myke, what kind of diplomat are you?  You start with points of agreement, and then work on resolving points of contention.”

“Fine.”  He began to pace around her slowly.  “State what you perceive to be our common goal.”

“We both want Magnussen fucking dead.  We both have reasons for not having killed him.”

“So whoever shot Sherlock wasn’t there to assassinate Magnussen.”

She turned over her shoulder and shot him a smile.  “Clever boy.”

He stopped pacing, leaving Janine twisted in her chair.  “You know why I haven’t moved against him.  Why haven’t you?  And don’t tell me it’s because he threatened to turn you over to Interpol.”

“It’s not just Interpol who’d be glad to have me.  Magnussen knows the contact information of a lot of people who want me dead.  Sherl buggered the network Jim and I built, which makes it hard for me to defend myself.”

“And if Magnussen dies, your name shows up on every television screen in England?”  The first request Magnussen had made of Mycroft was that he obtain, through back channels, the funds to construct a nationwide emergency broadcast system after the anti-terrorism bill, which would have provided them, had been struck down.  Mycroft had obtained them, and overseen most of the construction of the network as well.  It still wasn’t finished, but it covered most of London and some of the outlying metropolitan area.  Enough that Magnussen’s latest threat--to broadcast Moriarty’s film over it--wasn’t to be taken lightly.

Janine perched on the chair sideways and lay her folded arms across its back.  “He never threatened that.  It makes sense, if you think about it.  He can only exploit the vulnerability once before Smallwood’s techs will patch it, and I think he’s saving it for you.”  She lay her chin atop her arms, peering at him.  “You were a right eejit, Myke, digging your own grave because Magnussen asked you to and then acting surprised when he told you to climb into it.”

He supposed, from Janine’s perspective, giving Magnussen the ability to broadcast his leverage must seem absurd.  Not that he’d known, initially, that Magnussen had intended to use the broadcast system for blackmail purposes.  It seemed so … petty.  He’d expected Magnussen to use it to augment the impact of some act of domestic terrorism, like Moran’s unsuccessful attempt to blow up Parliament.  Perhaps as part of a larger scheme to profit from defense contracts if he successfully started a war.

Furthermore, Magnussen’s new threat hardly made Mycroft’s predicament worse.  He regretted any additional hurt or humiliation his public disgrace would cause Sherlock and their poor parents.  For himself, it made no difference whether the whole world saw the film or only his brother did.  Either way, his life was over.

“So.” He twirled his brolly in his hand and turned around.  “We’ve defined our common goal.  The next step is to discuss how we can assist one another in achieving it.”

Janine smirked.  “What you need, Mycroft, is a way to neutralize Magnussen’s leverage so that you can kill him without fear of all your dirty laundry airing on the telly.  I can give you that.”

He sniffed.  “If you were capable of such a thing, you’d have had Magnussen killed last night.”

“Ah, but I couldn’t have done it then.”

He frowned.  “Sherlock’s shooting provided you with an opportunity.  You know the identity of the shooter, ergo, you have something I want.”

She smiled.

“Which means you’ve been waiting on something you need from me.  Why are you just asking now?”  He scrutinized her face.  “I know you’re the one who gave those films to Magnussen.  Why didn’t you just attempt to coerce me?”  

She smiled.  “I already told you; I want us to be friends.”  The smile wilted into a sneer.  “Also, I _despise_ Magnussen.  I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of beating you.”

“Somehow I doubt you quibbled about that before.”

She shrugged.  “Let’s focus on the future instead of dwelling on the past.”  She stood up and walked towards him, extending her hand.  “I’ll even give you the book, if you want it.  As a gesture of goodwill.”

Mycroft tightened his grip on his brolly, declining the proffered handshake.  “An entirely symbolic one.  I’m sure you have digital copies.”

Janine drew her hand back and smoothed her pencil skirt.  “There’s something ‘bout the real thing, though, that makes me think you wouldn’t want Sherl leafing through it.  Jim meant to post it to him, y’know.  He wanted to drive a wedge between you boys, keep Sherl from running to you for help with his fake suicide.”

“You intercepted it.”

Janine made her way back to her chair, slowly enough to disguise her retreat.  “That book was entirely too valuable to waste on Jim’s ‘final problem.’”

“You tried to sell it to Magnussen after your brother was gone.”

“That was supposed to be my pension plan.”

“And he repaid you in currency of an entirely different kind.”

She grimaced.

“Is that what this is about, then?  Money?”

She shook her head.  “Nothing so mundane.  I want a head start.”

“You’re re-opening the consulting business.”

“Yes.”

“And you want me to look the other way for a period of time.”

She sat back down, crossing her legs.  “I’m hardly gonna be the nuisance Jim was, Myke.  He was so showy, stealing the Crown Jewels, hijacking your aeroplane full of dead people ….  My operations were always more … subtle.  Usually IT-based.  I intend to run a very different kind of business.  Think Hacking Team, but classier and more discreet.  Who knows, I might even be willing to do the odd job for dear old England.”

“And what about the arms dealing and human trafficking in Eastern Europe?”

“I’ve about had my fill o’ that.”

“What if I’d prefer you hadn’t?”

She arched an eyebrow.

“MI6 is looking for someone to get control of the chaos that has erupted since--”

“Your baby brother took down Baron Maupertuis.”

“Quite.  They’ve become fixated on the idea of sending him back into Serbia to repair the damage.”

She scoffed.  “He wouldn’t last six months.”

“That’s where you come in.  You have connections, so-called ‘street cred.’  You understand the underlying power structures.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere with me, Myke.”  She beamed.  “Alright.  I’ll go to Serbia and clean up Sherl’s mess for you.  It’d be a good way for me to get started.”

“You’d go in as an MI6 agent, with full support.  If you were to go rogue after the situation is resolved, obviously couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be repercussions ….”

“But I’d have my head start.”

He nodded.  “You’ve said you can neutralize the emergency broadcast system.  How?”

“Well I’m hardly gonna tell you _that_ , Myke.  Who’s to say you wouldn’t just kill me and go against Magnussen alone?”

“I thought you wanted to be friends.”

She grinned up at him.  “This is me at my friendliest, Ice Man.”

He stepped close enough to loom over her, using his height to its full advantage.  “So let’s have a friendly chat about who shot my brother.  You were clearly lying when you told me you hadn’t moved against Magnussen because he’d contact people who want you dead.  He couldn’t do that if _he_ were dead, and you said yourself you believe he’s saving the broadcast attack for me.  So, until recently, you didn’t oppose him because you were protecting someone else out of sentiment; that’s what he preys on.

“You were waiting and enduring, just as I was, until something changed, and it wasn’t Sherlock getting shot.  You know who shot him because you sent the shooter.  Ergo, you’d already started to move against Magnussen.  You shed your pressure point, Janine; you don’t care anymore.  Not family, then; I can’t choose to stop caring for my brother.  Only other option is: lover. You’ve been jilted recently.”

A flash of light ignited in her eyes and was extinguished just as quickly.

_Sherl had to coach me all through the wedding._

“What farcical nuptials.  The chief bridesmaid pining after the bride and the best man pining after the groom.”  Mycroft pressed his lips together.  “It’s almost making sense now, your relationship with my brother.  Neither of you thought the Watsons would actually go through with it, did you?  You were both so naive, thinking all Sherlock had to do was pop out of a cake and Watson would run off after him again.”

“Yes, well, once I realized Mary had betrayed me, I started planning my life without her.  Sherl just stood there mooning and playing ‘My Heart Bleeds for You’ on the world’s smallest violin.”

He could picture it exactly, and Janine knew it.  He pushed his brother’s wistful visage aside and focused on the woman in front of him.

“So, you are--were--involved with Mary Watson.”

Her lip twitched at the name.

_Does Janine wear Claire de la Lune?_

_I told him Mary wears it, but he said it was someone else._

“And she’s the one who shot Sherlock yesternight.”

“Yes.  Her real name is Alma Genebra Ruiz Anaya.”

He nodded.  He’d pull the file, later.

“You won’t find anything useful--everything in your records will have been purged or altered.  There’s a memory stick, though, with the originals.  Magnussen was awfully cagey about what exactly happened between them, but he let it slip that she’d made him turn over that much.  I can get it--or a copy of it--whichever you’d prefer.”

He’d have to find out how Janine had altered MI6’s records.  It was nagging him, how much information had been leaking from his office; it had to be either multiple informants, or a single source, highly placed.

“You told Mrs Watson,” he deliberately used her married name, “to come to Magnussen’s office to threaten him as retaliation for threatening the two of you with the telegram.  You told Sherlock that Magnussen would be at dinner, knowing he would try to break in and retrieve the letters.  I suppose you hoped that Sherlock and John would catch Mrs Watson doing something incriminating and that Dr Watson would leave her.”

He bent down closer to her.

Janine held her ground and glowered up at him.

“What an incredibly _stupid_ maneuver.  She might have killed both Magnussen _and_ my brother.  Sherlock and John might have come to her aid and turned her against you.  There were too many uncontrollable variables; you cannot tell me you are satisfied with this outcome.  Magnussen may have let you go for now because he realizes that you really are prepared to kill him.  But he could still bring every disgruntled former associate of Moriarty’s down on your head.  And Mary must suspect you.”

Janine huffed.  “Oh, do give me some credit, Myke.  I ran through all the likely scenarios and decided I could live with all the outcomes.  If Mary had killed both Sherlock and Magnussen, I’d have made an enemy instead of a friend of you, but Magnussen’s dead man’s switch would have done for you pretty quickly, I think.  And if Mary had asked Sherlock for help, he’d have bungled it royally and you’d still need me to clean up his mess.  As long as I keep mum about what went on in Magnussen’s office, he’ll leave me be for a bit.  It’s our new understanding.  He doesn’t want the press or the police to know what he’s doing.  And as for Mary,” her eyes sparkled.  “I can take care of her.”

Mycroft peered down his nose at her.  “And what if she’d killed Sherlock, and not Magnussen?  I’d have been free to come after you, and don’t think I wouldn’t have done.”

She sniggered.  “Aww, Ice Man.  I know you’d like to think that if Sherl were killed you’d turn into an American action hero, nothing to lose and nothing to live for.  But both of us know the truth is you’d crumble like day-old pastry.”  Janine basked in her victory for a single moment, then continued as though nothing had happened.  “Mary may not be _my_ pressure point anymore, but she’s your brother’s now, via John.  Magnussen will use it. That’s our opportunity.”

“I dislike the idea of using my brother as bait.”

“He’s the tastiest morsel you’ve got, Mikey.”

He gripped his brolly tighter.  “Tell me your proposal and I’ll tell you if it’s acceptable.”

“You’ve heard the rumors that Magnussen keeps all his blackmail in vaults under Appledore.”

“And they’re just that: rumors.”  Mycroft had sent in a recon team with surveying equipment.  They’d found no evidence of underground structures.

“Sherl believes it, though.  I may have told him I’ve seen them.”  She covered her mouth with her fingertips in an exaggerated ‘oops’ gesture.  

Mycroft narrowed his eyes.  “He’ll want to access the vaults to retrieve everything Magnussen has on Mary.”

“Yes.  And he’ll ask Magnussen for an invite.  He’ll offer something in exchange--something of yours, I suspect.  Make sure he gets it, and that it’s nothing you’d mind Magnussen getting his hands on.”

“And then?  I fail to see what we’ve accomplished, other than putting Sherlock in Magnussen’s home.”

“Stop and think about that for a moment.  You know what Magnussen’s like, what he wants, what he’ll do.”

“No.”  He stamped the tip of his umbrella on the concrete.  “Completely unacceptable.  Try again.”

“Get your knickers untwisted and hear me out.  You’ll install a recording device in whatever you give him--laptop is easiest.  We won’t let it go too far, Myke.  You’ll be standing by with the cavalry.  And after, you’ll have Magnussen for extortion, blackmail.  We can give him a taste of his own medicine.”

It might work.  He didn’t like all of the variables, but with careful planning, it might be possible.  But there would be copious fallout.  “Whatever Magnussen says on any recording is likely to implicate Mrs Watson.”

“Since when do you care what happens to Mary?  She shot your brother, as I recall.”

Sherlock would want to protect her, for John’s sake.  He’d know she hadn’t meant to kill him, that she’d deliberately missed vital organs in order to buy herself time to intimidate him into silence.

“Sherlock will never forgive me.”

“I think he’ll thank you.”

He chuckled.  “For someone who spent two and a half months pretending to date my brother, you don’t know him at all.”

“Don’t I?  Sherl’s putting a brave face on it and doing his level best to love Mary for John’s sake.  But he’s dying inside, Mycroft.  He’s stewing in jealousy and self-pity and tormenting himself with what-abouts and could-have-beens.”

“It sounds as though you empathize.”

“I won’t deny it.”  She lifted her chin.  “He’ll never admit it, not even to himself, but what he wants, desperately, is for Mary and the baby to disappear so he can have John to himself again.  You can give that to him.  And he’ll thank you for it--not out loud.  No, he’ll bury his gratitude deep in his mind palace, down in the dark, where Jim lives.”  She smiled.  “But it’ll make him happy to help John pick up the pieces.  To fix his broken heart like he fixed that psychosomatic limp of his.”

“That was what you promised Mary as well, wasn’t it?  That Sherlock would put John back together after she left him.  When did she change her mind about running away with you?  Was it the _pregnancy_?”  He leaned on the word, letting himself gloat just a little.

Janine’s face hardened, and for a moment, he saw Moriarty in her dark eyes.

“Amazing how impending motherhood can shift a woman’s priorities.”

“Sure changed your mother’s, didn’t it?  Such a waste.”

He rolled his eyes.  “Is that the best you can do?  Insult my mother?  What is it you want, Janine?  For me to turn the recordings over to Lady Smallwood, have her re-open the inquest into Magnussen?  That would mean a very long, very public trial, most likely resulting in Mrs Watson’s extradition to America.  They’d execute her, I should think.  Or do you want me to negotiate an offer of immunity for her in exchange for testimony against Magnussen?”

“Don’t patronize me, Mycroft.  I know there wouldn’t be an offer.  Not with everything she’s done.  I wouldn’t have come to you if I wasn’t prepared to face whatever comes of this.”

“You had better mean it.  I expect your immediate cooperation, beginning with helping me create a cover story regarding what happened to Sherlock last night.”

“Well, as I told the police, Sherlock and John had an eight o’clock with Mr Magnussen yesterday evening.  They were interrupted by an intruder.  I’ve already put the information on his calendar and backdated it.  Magnussen won’t contradict us.”

“Yes, but the press are going to have a field day once they find out my brother’s been shot.  I expect Magnussen will keep it out of _his_ papers, but it’s still going to get out.”

“I’ll give them something else to talk about.”

He scowled.  “What?”

“Your brother’s sex life, of course.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Myke.  I don’t mean the porn.  I mean my torrid affair with Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant detective in the funny hat.  The chemistry was explosive.  We had sex seven times a night.  He came to my work to propose, but got shot by someone with a grudge against Magnussen, poor thing.  It kills me to break his heart, but I knew, seeing him so close to death, that I could never marry him and have him taken from me before his time.  I’m selflessly giving him up so he can keep solving crimes.”  She folded both hands over her heart.  “Also, the sex was brilliant while it lasted but there’s no girl who can keep pace with him long term.  Trust me, people will write about how Sherl made me wear the hat in bed, and not who shot him.”

Mycroft shook his head.  “It’s sordid.  It will sell.  It’s still going to cost me to get them to downplay the shooting.”

“I’ll give interviews to anyone whose feathers are ruffled by you not allowing them to print the real story.”

“Very well.  Titillate them.  You can play up the drugs angle as well.  He’s already deliberately tried to get that into the papers.”

“I’ll be sure to tell everyone he snorted coke off my baps.”

Mycroft winced.  “Do we really need so much color?”

“It was white, actually.”

He sighed.  “Under no circumstances are you to insinuate anything remotely reminiscent of Sherlock’s films.”

“Fine.  But I get to keep any money I make off the stories.”

“Agreed.  There’s one more thing.”  He kept his voice deliberately casual.  “About the Maupertuis film.”

Janine sat up a little straighter.  “Ask away.”

“Melinda Andrews.  When I questioned him, Jim said he came across her when he was looking for a body double for Irene.  In my experience, the universe is rarely so lazy.  I’d always suspected he was lying, that he’d arranged for Andrews’ sister to appear in Maupertuis’ pornography as a way of corrupting him.”

“You were wrong on two counts.  First: Jim never lied to you the entire time he was in custody.  I think it amused him to tell the truth.  He said he wanted to play fair.  Second, he never liked getting his hands dirty.  He’d have considered it beneath him to orchestrate the disappearance of a troubled, drug-addicted teenage girl.   _I’m_ the one who discovered one of your analysts had a membership to one of the Baron’s underage sites.   _I_ arranged for his sister to cross paths with one of Maupertuis’ recruiters.”

He thought that he was keeping his expression neutral, but he must have shown some tell, because Janine’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t tell me you’re squeamish, Myke.  He let her go.  Catch and release.”

He fought to keep his tone level.  “And then you waited for Andrews to see the films.”  

“Yes.  And he was indignant.  Self-righteous, hypocritical bastard.  He was fine watching until there was someone on screen he couldn’t objectify.  Then he was clamouring for ‘justice.’  But couldn’t take his evidence to you--or so he thought.  What would you have done if he had?  It’s not as though you’d’ve had the moral high ground.”

Mycroft sniffed.  “Don’t lecture me about morality, Ms Moriarty.  What about Sherlock?  Did you arrange for Maupertuis to ‘catch and release’ him, too?”  He wasn’t sure why he even bothered to ask.  She was hardly going to tell him the truth even if she had done, and he’d resigned himself to having to work with her regardless.  He knew Sherlock didn’t understand and would never forgive him for having suffered Maupertuis to live, but Mycroft had learned that sometimes you needed to wait for vengeance.  

“No.”  Janine folded her arms and leaned back in her chair.  “Why would I?  Jim’s obsession with Sherlock cost me everything.  No, Jim found it because he was a _fan_ of Maupertius’s live streams, particularly if they featured tall, dark, lanky boys.  Trust me, if I’d have known what your other brother was up to, I’d have put a stop to it.”

Sherrinford.  Mycroft boggled.  He tried to school his features, but wasn’t quick enough.

“Oh, dear me, you didn’t know, did you?”  Janine laughed aloud.  “It was Sherri who set up Sherl, not me.  Normally, Maupertuis’ crew wouldn’t have used a bloke like him at all; they preferred amateurs, new fish like Andrews, and Sherl was quite the pro already.  But then Ambassador Sherrinford Scott,” her tone expressed her disdain for his title, “met Maupertuis at some party with a bunch of Russian oligarchs, and bragged about how his baby brother had just taken down that chap Hudson in Miami, how _proud_ he was of him.  And the Baron didn’t take kindly to that.  He and Hudson went back a long ways.  Plus Sherri was opposing him on some trade deal.  He wanted to send a message.”

Mycroft’s breath hissed between his teeth.  Moriarty had told him, and still he hadn’t understood.

_Does Mycroft know he was so betrayed?  Does Sherlock know he was also betrayed, and by his own brother?_

“And here I thought that was why you killed him.”  Janine cocked her head to the side.  “Why _did_ you kill him?”

“I did not kill my brother.”  

“Arranged his death, then, if you want to pick nits.”

“I think you put entirely too much stock in fairy tales, Ms Moriarty.”

She snorted.  “You’re not seriously claiming you’re innocent.”

He angled his brolly away from himself with his palm, surveying his fingernails.  “Innocent is the last adjective I would use to describe myself.  Still, I would be careful how credulous you are of Jim’s accusations.  Moriarty was a liar; he never played a fair game his entire life.  Certainly not with me.  And Magnussen is …” his lip curled, “projecting.  If I may take a page from your brother’s storybook, the world he sees is the one reflected by the devil’s mirror.  He sees his own black soul in everyone else.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you believed in the idea of a soul, Mikey.”

He smiled at her, the smile people tended to interpret however they liked.  “I don’t.”  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want more Janine, now would be the time to head over and read [He Made Me Wear the Hat](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4143972), if you haven't already.  Technically, the next chapter of this fic takes place before the events of that one do, chronologically, but I still think that thematically this is a better transition point.


	14. Part III: Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it might be time to re-read the tags.  Partially because this chapter is very intense, and also because there are new tags.  The new tags aren’t for this chapter, but now that we are heading towards the end (you may notice that we also have a final chapter count), I’ve realized that this fic, while still not a “true” holmecest fic IMO, is skirting much closer to the line than I originally intended.  It just sort of happened.
> 
>  
> 
> I suspect this isn’t a problem for most of you, but if there are some readers who are fine with Mycroft pining after Sherlock but not with any kind of physical contact between siblings then I’m sorry, and I thought I might as well warn you before you invest more in this fic.
> 
>  
> 
> This chapter is brutal, even by my standards.  It’s more of a character study with very little new plot details, though, so it can probably be skimmed/skipped if you’d rather not read it.  It’s also the nadir of the Camcroft arc of this fic, so there won’t be more of this.
> 
>   
>  I consider the deleted scene from HLV canon in this universe.  If you haven’t watched it, you may want to [watch it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNpCm1y1xEk) before proceeding so you understand the references.  Note that it has pretty blatant Magnussen/Sherlock non-con undertones.

August 8, 2014

8:01 PM

 

“I’ve just received this from Germany.”  Magnussen opened his desk drawer and removed a wooden box.  He flipped the top open, extending it to Mycroft as though offering him a cigar.  “I thought we should try it.”

While Mycroft had never seen a device exactly like this one--he presumed Magnussen had had it commissioned--he quickly deduced its purpose.  It was a restraint, consisting of a hinged pair of bars curved to match the contours of a human male’s buttocks and thighs, with an aperture in the center, presumably for the testicles to go through.  Wingnuts on each side would serve to lock the device in place.  Each end was fitted with a double-locking thumbcuff.  Mycroft swallowed, and pressed his palms against his trouser legs to wipe the sweat from his palms and keep his fingers from trembling.

“The thing I love about this,” Magnussen lifted the device from its box, turning it over in his hand, “is that it demonstrates how very little you need to do to completely restrain someone.”  He set the box on his desk.  “Take off your clothes.”

Mycroft faced Magnussen while he removed his clothing, which he folded and deposited on the coffee table next to the windows.  Mycroft set his shoes on the rug beneath it, then peeled off his socks, rolled them and placed them inside his shoes, conscious of Magnussen’s eyes on him as he did so.  Whether Magnussen found anything about his body to fault or praise, Mycroft neither knew nor cared.  Magnussen never showed any outward manifestations of physical arousal, displaying only a certain cold glee in Mycroft’s humiliation.

Magnussen gestured to the desk.  “Bend over and put your wrists behind you, please.”

Mycroft had phrased an order as a request himself often enough to understand the distinction.  He stepped off the rug onto the tile; a chill rose up from the floor through his bare feet as he stepped through the amber reflections of the city lights, and crossed to Magnussen’s desk.  He turned his head to one side and bent at the waist until he was lying across the desk, arms palms up alongside his thighs.  His nipples hardened against the glass.

Magnussen reached between Mycroft’s legs and lifted his testicles, pulling them between the backs of his thighs, rolling them between his fingers as he did so.  There was nothing painful about the gesture, but his every instinct railed against the notion of allowing a person who had nothing but malicious intent towards him to handle the most sensitive parts of his body.  He was unable to suppress a shiver as Magnussen placed the metal bars against his naked skin and threaded his scrotum through the opening between them.  He exhaled hard when Magnussen closed the hinge; the bars were thinner in the center so as not to crush him, but he was very conscious of the pressure and weight of the device.  The metal curves rested against his buttocks, reminding him that any attempt to stand would be met with torment.

Magnussen lifted Mycroft’s wrists; he shuddered again at the dampness of Magnussen’s touch, which built upon the cold of the desk and the floor and the metal pulling at his body.  Magnussen fastened the tiny cuffs on either side of the metal bars around first one thumb, than the other, clicking the locks in place tightly enough to be felt, though not so tight as to cut off the circulation.  His chest tightened around his palpitating heart as he realized he would need to keep his hands elevated in order to keep the device in its current position.  If he allowed himself to rest his arms on the desk, it would pull on his scrotum.  He wasn’t sure if this would be excruciating, or merely very uncomfortable, but he had no intention of finding out.  Mycroft heard the sounds of Magnussen’s shoes shuffling against the tile as he stepped back, apparently to admire his handiwork.

“Just look at you, Mycroft.  A single, tiny device, and I can do anything I like to you."  He spread Mycroft's buttocks.  "I can beat you, sodomize you, insert my fist into your colon ….”

Mycroft shivered.  He’d begun taking pre-exposure prophylaxis after his first encounter with Magnussen as a precaution, but as Magnussen had shown no prior inclination to rape him, he’d dared to hope that he was uninterested.  He now suspected Magnussen had merely been savoring the build-up.  He struggled to control his breathing, to relax his internal muscles, but was unable to keep his heart rate or the bile in his belly from rising at the thought of Magnussen inside him.

Magnussen pressed his thumb into Mycroft’s hole, cupping his testicles with his fingers.

Mycroft cringed and then suppressed a cry as the device pulled at his scrotum and pain lanced up his spine.

“I enjoy the smell of helplessness.” Magnussen drew his tongue up the length of Mycroft’s spine, then scented the crook of his neck.  “Perspiration.  Desperation.  Resignation.”  He lapped the sweat accumulating between Mycroft’s ear and his hairline. “Speaking of which, I have another video for you to watch.”

Still keeping his thumb in place, Magnussen extracted a remote from his desk drawer.  He tapped the back of Mycroft’s head with the remote.  Mycroft faced forward, propping his chin on the glass and staring at the screen which came to life on the far wall.  The glass pressed against his Adam’s apple, making it difficult to breathe.  He swallowed.

Magnussen brought up a bird’s eye view of Sherlock’s hospital room.  A trickle of dread formed on his forehead as he realized the feed had come from one of his own cameras, which he’d put in place in case anyone returned to finish what Mary had started.

The video feed was silent.  Sherlock inclined his head towards the door as Magnussen entered the room, gesturing towards individual bouquets in the moat of floral arrangements which ringed his brother’s sickroom.  By the angle of the light and the state of the flowers, this video had been shot earlier that morning.  Mycroft flinched when Magnussen sat at his brother’s bedside, casually stroking Sherlock’s arms and hands.  The overhead view was no good for lip reading, but Magnussen was clearly speaking to Sherlock as he caressed his fingers.  He paused to kiss the backs of Sherlock’s knuckles.

Mycroft’s viscera twisted.  

“I covet your brother’s hands, Mycroft,” Magnussen whispered in his ear.  “I covet his wet mouth, and the cleft of his arse.  I covet his screams, and his tears, and his resigned little sighs.”

On screen, Magnussen leaned into Sherlock, their lips so close it looked as though he would kiss him, as he no doubt whispered threats into their shared air.

“I wanted to lick that little cupid’s bow, bite his lower lip until my teeth meet, spit into his mouth.”  He pulled his thumb from Mycroft’s body and stood up behind him.  “You understand, don’t you?”

He flinched at the sound of a button popping open and a zip sliding down.

“I did instruct you to keep your brother’s powdered nose out of my affairs.  You failed.”  Magnussen flicked his testicles; pain radiated out from his scrotum into the bowl of his pelvis, shooting up the length of his spine.

Mycroft’s arms were beginning to burn from the effort of holding them level.  He snugged them tighter against his thighs, using the stickiness of his own sweat to keep them from slipping.

“I’d say that makes him fair game, now.”

The sensation of a thick glans demanding entrance barely registered before Magnussen’s bollocks struck Mycroft’s own.  Waves of nausea poured from his groin, crashing over his eyes and leaving behind a sea of green.  He fought to stay still, clenching his teeth and shoulders.  He couldn’t have stood even if the restraint wasn’t keeping him bent double.  The edge of the desk was all that kept him from curling into a ball.

Just when he thought he might vomit, Magnussen went still inside him.  The pain ebbed as Magnussen traced a circle over the small of Mycroft’s back with his thumb.  “In the beginning, my only aim was to get to you, you know.  But since we started watching your brother’s filmography, I’ve begun to fancy him.  This should hardly come as a surprise to you.”

_You know what he wants, what he’s like, what he’ll do._

Mycroft squeezed his eyes shut.  Magnussen didn’t seem to notice or care that he wasn’t watching the video anymore, which had shown Sherlock staring up at the ceiling of his empty hospital room for several minutes now.  This had gone too far.  He’d accepted the previous violations as the price for Magnussen’s silence.  Keeping his brother in his life had justified almost any cost.  And anyway, he could hardly allow the Maupertuis film to be released and tell Sherlock he’d been unwilling to endure less than what his brother had been subjected to on camera in exchange for sparing himself further humiliation.  But agreeing to use Sherlock as bait--the entire point of Mycroft’s appeasement had been to keep Sherlock out of his dealings with Magnussen, and now--he would find another way, he would ….

“I will kill you before you lay a hand on my brother.”  He grunted the words into the desk.  A patch of fog had formed on the glass from the heat of his breath.

Magnussen laughed aloud.  “Oh, Mycroft, that was lovely.  As gratifying as these months of docility have been, I was beginning to tire of it.  I do so prefer when you pretend you can resist.”  He began to move, deep, steady thrusts which pushed the tops of Mycroft’s thighs into the edge of the desk.  “I understand that at this moment you are fantasizing about murdering me, but may I remind you that if I do not enter an override password into the emergency broadcast system every day, all of the videos concerning yourself and Sherlock, including the enchanting fairy tale recorded by Moriarty, will be broadcast simultaneously on every screen in London.”

“I don’t care.”

“No?  I suppose that is your prerogative.  What about your junkie detective brother?  Would he care?”  Magnussen pounded harder, moving his hand to Mycroft’s nape, pinning him down.

Mycroft thought a fissure might have split open, or that he might be bruising inside, but the signals emanating from his rectal nerves were drowned beneath the cacophony of pain that was his scrotum.

“Perhaps not.  Sherlock seems to derive a certain thrill from degradation.  You know who thought twice, though, when I threatened her with her own crimes being broadcast?  Mary, Mary, quite contrary.  John Watson’s pressure point.  Watson, of course, is Sherlock’s pressure point.  Sherlock in turn is your _pressure point_.”  

Magnussen drove his thumb and forefinger into the physical pressure points at the sides of his neck for emphasis.  His entire body tensed as fingernails dug into his clenched muscles.  He gasped against the glass, panic rising in him as Magnussen pinned him to the desk like a specimen in a shadow box and impaled him.  

“During the conversation you just viewed, I informed your brother that I haven’t shared the identify of his shooter with the police.  He was relieved, I think.  He wants to protect her, for Watson’s sake, even after everything she’s done to him.”

Magnussen squeezed his neck harder and continued to ram into him.  Tears welled in Mycroft’s eyes, and he bit his lip to keep down his cry of pain, then stopped before he broke the skin.  Better to scream behind the soundproof wall than leave Magnussen’s office looking like he’d been ….

“So you see, it doesn’t matter that you’re willing to let me release the films.  Sherlock isn’t ready for me to tell Watson that his wife is an assassin, to call all of the people who want her dead and tell them that she’s married and pregnant.  All I need to do is threaten John Watson, and Sherlock will grovel at my feet.  You know it’s true.”

The thought of Sherlock crawling before Magnussen forcing its way to the forefront of his mind.

_We won’t let it go too far, Myke.  You’ll be standing by with the cavalry._

“I’m going to have him whether you fight me or not, Mycroft.  But, if you’re very, very good to me, if you give me everything that I ask, I might be willing to share.  Let you have what you’ve always wanted and been too ashamed to take for yourself.”

Magnussen worked his hand between Mycroft’s thighs, stroking his cock, which hung semi-hard beneath the desk.  “How would you want him?  Hooded and bound?  Do you think he would recognize you?  Would you want him to?”

Despite the waves of pain-induced nausea, Mycroft felt himself responding to the friction of Magnussen’s fingers around his shaft.

“Would it assuage your guilt if I told him I’d ruin Mr and Mrs Psychopath if he didn’t get on his knees for you?”

Mycroft clenched his fists until he felt his fingernails dent his palms.  The sharp, subtle pain was oddly grounding, a bright beacon amidst the roiling dark agony surging in and out like a tide as Magnussen fucked him.

“He’ll do it, you know.” Magnussen paused to suck his ear.  “Sherlock would do anything for John Watson.  Even his brother.”

Mycroft whimpered.

Magnussen shifted both hands under Mycroft’s hips, lifting them, making him tiptoe to keep the restraint from pulling his scrotum.  The forced arch of his back shifted more pressure to his prostate; he thought of Sherlock, hands chained above his head, toes straining as Danko pushed down on the small of his back.  Once he adjusted to his new position, Magnussen resumed stroking Mycroft’s cock.

“He’ll do it because I’ll compel him to, but he’ll know that you wanted it.  I can see it on his face now: the confusion, the dawning realization of your betrayal, the impotent fury, then acceptance as he swallows his pride along with your sperm.”  He twisted his thumb and finger over Mycroft’s glans at the apex of each stroke, and Mycroft surrendered, knowing how Magnussen intended this encounter to end.  “You’d love it, wouldn’t you?  And you’d hate yourself for loving it and hate your brother for making you hate yourself.”

Mycroft bit his tongue to keep from moaning as he spilled into Magnussen’s hand.  He told himself that the response was physical, inevitable given sustained stimulation of engorged erectile tissue.  He didn’t believe it.

As soon as Magnussen had wrung the last of Mycroft’s orgasm from him, he chased his own, pounding into him with abandon.  The pain was worse now that Mycroft had had his release, and he gave up on holding back the cries which were forced out of him with each thrust.  But it was his brother’s screams that echoed inside his head.

_Red.  Red.  Red._

He resolved to kill Magnussen, whatever it took.  Even if it took momentarily putting Sherlock at Magnussen’s mercy.  It was to protect Sherlock, after all, in the end.  Protecting his secrets had always been as much about shielding Sherlock from Mycroft’s depravity as it had been about protecting himself.

He thought of all the times he’d needled Sherlock about his ‘virginity.’  He’d known performing in pornography had been chipping away at his brother, that he’d burned to unburden himself to someone but had been ashamed and afraid of Mycroft’s disapproval, but he’d feigned ignorance so Sherlock wouldn’t know that he knew.  He thought of the first time he’d watched the Maupertuis film, how he’d known, even before Magnussen had shown him the uncut version, that he was witnessing his brother being raped, how he’d still felt fascination alongside the horror.  He thought of the way his cock had swelled in his trousers while he’d sat with his feet up watching Sherlock being beaten with a pipe.

_I would have intervened if I’d considered it a serious possibility._

Magnussen slumped against his back, panting into his ear.

_The way you did with me?_

He brought his sticky palm to Mycroft’s lips.

_I suppose I deserved that._

Mycroft lapped up his own bitterness, tears streaming down his cheeks as Magnussen softened inside him.


	15. Part III: Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I know, I just posted a chapter count and then immediately upped it. What can I say; you folks asked for more Sherrinford, and I agreed we needed more Sherrinford. So last weekend I wrote a chapter of Sherrinford :D. BTW, if there are any other loose ends people think need tying up, now would be the time to make suggestions. I'm winding everything down, now.

December 25, 2014

2:03 PM

 

“I’m glad you’ve given up on the Magnussen business.”  Mycroft strode towards the gate, a few paces behind his brother.

Sherlock paused with his cigarette halfway to his lips.  “Are you?”  

_I consider you under his thumb._

What else might Sherlock have said, if John hadn’t been in the room?  He had been very careful.  But his brother was occasionally perceptive.  Mycroft paused just behind Sherlock so as to conceal his own body language.  “I’m still curious, though.  He’s hardly your usual kind of puzzle.  Why do you … hate him?”

Sherlock whirled on him.  “Because he attacks people who are different and preys on their secrets.” He spat the words between puffs of smoke.  “Why don’t you?”  

Ah, so this was still about Gloria and Victor, even after all these years.  Sherlock didn’t suspect the nature of his relationship with Magnussen, then.  However strained relations were between his brother and himself, he couldn’t believe that Sherlock would be indifferent to his plight if he knew the truth.  He took a puff on his cigarette.

“He never causes too much damage to anyone important.  He’s far too intelligent for that.  He’s a businessman, that’s all, and occasionally useful to us.”  He rolled his cigarette between his fingers.  “A necessary evil--not a dragon for you to slay.”  He inhaled.  The woody flavor of Sherlock’s cigarettes was so strong he might as well be smoking hamster bedding.

Sherlock’s lip quirked.  “A dragon slayer.”  He turned slowly, apparently reveling in the moniker, and came to a stop beside Mycroft.  “Is that what you think of me?”

“No.”  He glanced at Sherlock.  “It’s what you think of yourself.”

The front door squeaked on his hinges.  Mycroft pinched his cigarette.

“Are you two smoking?” demanded Mummy.

Sherlock and he spun around in unison, tucking their cigarettes behind their backs, much as Sherlock had done the first time Mycroft had caught Sherlock smoking and had joined him instead of making his brother throw them away.

“No!” said Mycroft.

“It was Mycroft,” said Sherlock.

_And there is a whole childhood in a nutshell._

Mummy frowned, clearly unconvinced but uninterested in starting an argument on Christmas, and retreated back into the house.

Sherlock blew a smug stream of smoke in her direction.

Mycroft flicked ash onto the gravel drive.  “I have, by the way, a job offer I should like you to decline.”  Might as well get this out of the way so he could tell Lady Smallwood he’d tried.  Once the Magnussen affair was concluded, he would suggest Janine as an alternate candidate.  He’d make the same argument he’d made when he’d proposed sending Irene to Karachi after the fiasco with Bond Air: why waste the time and money with an agent like Sherlock, who would need to build a cover, when they had an asset who already had connections and credibility within the networks they meant to infiltrate?

“I decline your kind offer.”  Sherlock’s voice was all mock politeness.

Well, there was a surprise.  He’d half expected Sherlock to accept it out of spite.  “I shall pass on your regrets.”

“What was it?”  His brother’s voice rose in pitch at the end--curiosity evident beneath his mild façade.

“MI6.” He watched Sherlock’s face out of the corner of his eye.  “They want to place you back into Eastern Europe.”

The line of Sherlock’s spine straightened.  He’d heard the implied ‘to clean up the mess you made when you killed Maupertuis,’ even if Mycroft hadn’t said it outright.

“An undercover assignment that would prove fatal to you in, I think, about six months.”

Sherlock froze with his cigarette halfway to his mouth, brows furrowing.  “Then why don’t you want me to take it?”

Mycroft tensed, realizing his brother was, on some level, serious.  He’d thought he’d seen the ripples that would flow from the stone he’d thrown years ago, when he’d flung the duvet off his brother and ordered him from his bed.  He imagined that Sherlock believed that Mycroft disapproved him, that he thought Sherlock was squandering his gifts, that he resented having to clean up Sherlock’s messes.  He’d never imagined Sherlock would think Mycroft actually wanted to be rid of him.

He knew he had to say _something_.  He couldn’t tell Sherlock everything, not now, when they were so close to eliminating Magnussen; some things he couldn’t tell him ever.  But once this was over, he’d try to mend the rift that had grown so wide between them.  During the years that Sherlock had spent dismantling Moriarty’s network, Mycroft had felt they’d gained a certain mutual respect for each other--at least until his brother had gone rogue and chased after Maupertuis.  What had happened in Serbia had chilled his brother’s affection for him somewhat, but even after, there had been moments, like when they’d been playing Operation together, when he’d thought that it might be possible for friendship to exist between them again.

“It’s tempting …” He lifted both his tone and his eyebrow so that Sherlock would know he wasn’t serious.  “But on balance you have more utility closer to home.”

“Utility!” Sherlock snorted.  “How do I have utility?”  He expectantly sucked his cigarette.

This was the terrifying bit, the bit Mycroft had almost regretted conceding to Janine.  Things had gone so very, very wrong the last time he’d used his younger brother as bait.  But Sherlock seemed intent on destroying Magnussen, and oh, how Mycroft empathized.  And with this plan, his brother would have an opportunity to strike a blow at the man they both despised.  He wished that he could inform Sherlock of his role, but there was no way he could brief him without opening himself to questions he was unable to answer.  And in any case, as long as Magnussen held leverage over Mary and by extension John and Sherlock, it was too risky to confide anything in his brother that Magnussen might be able to extort out of him.

“Here be dragons.”  Mycroft took a pull on his own cigarette.  The bitter smoke stung his lungs and the nicotine was making him lightheaded.  He coughed.  “This isn’t agreeing with me.  I’m going in.”  He dropped the butt and stamped it out, then made his way back to the house.

“You need low tar,” Sherlock called after him.  “You still smoke like a beginner.”

“Also ….” He stopped before reaching the door.  Now that Sherlock couldn’t see his face, it was easier.  “Your loss would break my heart.”

Sherlock was overcome with a fit of coughing.  “What the _hell_ am I supposed to say to that?!”

It had been too much to hope, then, that his brother would admit to any reciprocity of sentiment.  He turned around.  “Merry Christmas?”

Sherlock scowled.  “You hate Christmas.”

“Yes.”  He smiled inanely, affecting loopiness, hoping that Sherlock would remember his words at the right time, that he’d realize Mycroft had known Sherlock meant to sell the laptop to Magnussen all along, and that he would be coming to rescue him.  “Perhaps there was something in the punch.”

“Clearly.”  Sherlock raised both eyebrows and glanced askance at him.  “Go and have some more.”

He hadn’t had any yet.  And he wouldn’t until he’d taken the antidote.

 

* * *

 

December 25, 2014

2:36 PM

 

Mycroft woke with a band of pressure encircling his skull from nape to temples and wreath of pain shimmering around the edges of his vision.  He fumbled for his watch.   _Shit._

“Wakey wakey, Mr Holmes.”  Wiggins pressed a glass of water into his hand.  Mycroft would have thrown it into Wiggin’s weasely face if he wasn’t so thirsty.

“What did you change?”  Mycroft gulped the water down while waiting for Wiggins to answer.

“Beg pardon?”

He wiped the back of his mouth with his hand.  “The punch.  You changed something.  The dose, the formula.”

Wiggins frowned.  “No changes from what I gave Missus Watson.”

Eager as he was to have a reason to distrust Mary, Anthea had had a chemist verify the formula she’d obtained from Wiggins in order to craft their antidote.

The twinge in his insides whenever he asked himself if he’d forgotten to lock the door or left his phone at the office niggled at him underneath the faint nausea from the punch.  Anthea should be here.

Mycroft picked up his phone.  There were multiple messages from a withheld number, all within the last forty minutes:

 

> and they’re off
> 
>  

> emailed u a link to the gps tracker
> 
>  

> myke?

Those would keep for now.  He dialed Anthea, gritting his teeth as the phone rang.  And rang.  The call went to voicemail.  As he hung up, he realized the helicopter should have arrived half an hour ago.  Mycroft went through all the stages of grief in a matter of moments.  There was no denying it was the antidote Anthea had supplied him with that had been tampered with, no time to be angry at her betrayal, and he was in no mood to bargain.

He dialed again, directly to the hangar this time.

“How can I help you, Mr Holmes?”

“Where is the helicopter I requested be at my parents’ home at a quarter after two?”

The man at the other end of the line hesitated.  “Your assistant informed us there was a change of plans and you wouldn’t be requiring transportation.”

“There was a miscommunication.  Send the helicopter immediately.”

“Of course, sir.”

He hung up and glared at Wiggins, who flinched.  “I’ll go check on Missus Watson and the wee one, then?”

“Why don’t you.”

Wiggins fled.

Mycroft logged into his email.  Janine had sent him an app with live GPS tracking and a link to an encrypted audio and video feed.  The screen was solid black; the thwacking of helicopter blades and the roar of the wind were all that was audible.  Sherlock and John had opted not to chat with their escort, then.  There would be video only if Sherlock opened the laptop screen.

Mycroft carried the phone with him into the sitting room.  Wiggins was holding a glass of water for Mary, who was curled in an armchair in front of the fire, wincing and pressing one hand to her belly and another to her forehead.

“Oh, fuck that hurts.”

“Sorry.  Should clear in a bit.”

She scowled.  “If I wasn’t so fat, I’d punch you.”

Mycroft cleared his throat.

Mary looked up at him.  “What are you still doing here?”

“The helicopter will be here shortly.”

She nodded, but suspicion shrouded her eyes.

“John’s gun,” he pressed.

“What about it?”

“Did you take the bullets out of John’s gun?”

She rolled her eyes.  “Yes, of course.  I know you don’t trust me--”

He tilted his head and raised one eyebrow.

Mary crossed her arms over her enormous belly.  “Yes, yes, I’m alive because you are allowing it.”

“Indeed.  And I’m allowing it because you are a guest in my parents’ home at my brother’s behest.”  Sherlock had called him and had all but begged Mycroft to be gracious to Mary.  Mycroft had been shocked at the apparent sincerity in his brother’s voice.  He’d initially suspected that Sherlock’s invitation was a pretext to bring John with him to Appledore.  He now believed his brother was actually attempting to save their marriage.  Sherlock’s obsession with Magnussen was definitely about the Trevors.  He should have realized it before.

“Also because it’s Christmas,” he added.  “I can’t guarantee your safety after Boxing Day.”

“And here I thought it was because John loves me and Sherlock loves John and you love Sherlock.”  She smiled, radiant and artificial.  “I suppose it helps that I’m the only person in this house who could have gotten John’s gun off him without him noticing.  Which I did.  I lifted it, filled the magazine with blanks, same weight, same jackets.  Then I put it back.  He didn’t notice.”

“You’re certain.”

She frowned.  “Why are you panicking?”

“I’m not panicking.”

Mary’s eyebrows knit together.  “What time is it?”  She slapped Wiggins on the arm.

He glanced at his watch, a cheap digital thing.  “Two forty.”

“Fuck.  Bloody buggering fuck.”  

“My sentiments exactly.”

Mary fumbled through her poncho until she found her phone, then began texting furiously, presumably to Janine.

Wiggins retreated to the kitchen.  “I’ll look in on Mrs Holmes, then.”

Mary set the phone on the arm of her chair and glanced up at him.  “I’ve told Janine we’re both awake now and you’ll be on your way shortly.  Do you want me to come with?”

“No.”

“Very well, I’ll go help Wiggins look after your parents.”

Mycroft stiffened.  He’d been expecting Anthea to arrive with the helicopter and send him off, and stay to keep an eye on Wiggins.  He realized now it had been incredibly foolish to rely so much on a single individual, but he’d trusted her absolutely, and now--

Mary’s eyes narrowed.  “I’m hardly going to shoot any more of your family members, Mycroft.”

“I should hope not.  For your sake.”

She sighed.  “For what it’s worth, I _am_ sorry.  Janine told me not to move against Magnussen, that she would figure something out.  I should have trusted her, but he--I let him get under my skin, and impulsively decided to pay him a visit.  And then Sherlock was there and I didn’t expect to see him and I panicked.”

“I’m not the person to whom you should apologize.”

“I know.  I will.  For everything.  Then I’ll make it up to him.”

He stared down his nose at her.  “And how, pray tell, will you manage that?  By giving him Dr Watson?”

She smoothed the blanket lying across her belly.  “I’ll step aside, yes.”

“You and Ms Hawkins act as though Watson is a stream which will flow towards Sherlock as soon as you remove the impediments.”

“You don’t think so.”

“I don’t think he has the faintest idea how to love my brother.”

Mary’s expression hardened.  “Did you ever think that maybe that might be because you convinced Sherlock to lie to him?”

He frowned.  “That was--”

“Necessary.  I know.  John’s my husband; I know full well he’s no secret agent.  But did it please you, just a little, to think that Sherlock faking his death would mean he’d spend years with you as his only lifeline, and that when he came back, he might not be able to return to the life he built without you?”

“No.  I convinced Sherlock to act in his own best interest, knowing he would blame me for the consequences after.  I took no pleasure in it.”

She smiled. “Of course not.”

Mycroft stood at the mantel, brain racing, and willfully ignored Mary, who watched him from her perch in the armchair.  He listened to the ambient sounds of the inside of Sherlock’s helicopter and impatiently counted the seconds since he’d hung up on the dispatcher.  He was so focused on the audio it took him a moment to realize there were helicopter blades thwacking over the roof outside and not just in his headphones.  They’d shaved five minutes off the usual travel time.  It still wasn’t enough.

“Sounds like your ride’s here,” said Mary

He tore himself from the mantel, tucking his phone into his breast pocket.  “Indeed.  Good day, Mrs Watson.”

“Good luck, Mycroft.”

“There’s no such thing as luck,” he muttered, and strode from the room, past his father’s prone form, back into the kitchen where Wiggins was helping his mother sip water.  She called “Myke!” after him as he rushed past.  He jogged down the path he’d walked with Sherlock earlier the afternoon and then sprinted across the grass to meet the helicopter as it touched down.

 

* * *

 

December 25, 2014

3:29 PM 

 

> r u listening to this?

Mycroft closed his eyes, then opened them and turned towards the ceiling of the helicopter.  Janine had worked as a personal assistant to a powerful businessman.  He knew that she was perfectly capable of sending a professionally worded text message and was merely trying to irritate him, at this of all times.

 

> he just admitted to kidnapping john and setting him on fire
> 
>  

He _was_ listening to the audio feed from Appledore on his headphones, and it did please him that Magnussen was gloating about having placed an unconscious John beneath the firewood for the bonfire on Guy Fawkes night.  Adding assault and kidnapping to the extortion charges drastically improved their odds of getting anything to stick.

Magnussen had called Mary a murderer, as well.  Mycroft waited to see if Janine would respond to that, but there were no further misspelled text messages.

He momentarily paused the feed. “What’s our ETA?” he asked the pilot.

“Half an hour, sir.”

“I appreciate any reductions you can make in our journey time.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

Mycroft settled back into his jump seat and resumed listening to the feed streaming from his laptop.

“Let me explain how leverage works, Doctor Watson,” Magnussen crooned into his headphones.  A beep sounded in the background as Magnussen turned the television on.  He used the same model of remote as at his office.

Mycroft felt the first prickles of anxiety tickling the base of his spine.  

“For those who understand these things, Mycroft Holmes is the most powerful man in the country.  Well … apart from me.”

Mycroft took a breath, held it, then let it out.  

“Mycroft’s pressure point is his junkie detective brother, Sherlock.”  Footsteps.  “And Sherlock’s pressure point is his best friend, John Watson.  John Watson’s pressure point is his wife.  I own John Watson’s wife … I own Mycroft.   _He’s_ what I’m getting for Christmas.”

_I’m going to have him whether you fight me or not, Mycroft.  But, if you’re very, very good to me, if you give me everything that I ask, I might be willing to share._

Breath, count, hold, count, release, count.

“It’s an exchange, not a gift.”  His brother’s voice was contemptuous and low.

_Do you think he would recognize you?  Would you want him to?_

He closed his eyes.  Hold, count, release, count.  Keep the carbon dioxide from building up in his system.  

Magnussen laughed. Mycroft realized he was unsure what he was laughing at, that he’d dissociated for several minutes of conversation.  Unacceptable.  He bit his lip, focusing on the pain.

“You know,” Magnussen’s smile was audible, “I honestly expected something _good_.”

“Oh,” retorted Sherlock, “I think you’ll find the contents of that laptop ….”

“… include a GPS locator.”  Magnussen cut Sherlock off.  “By now, your brother will have noticed the theft, and security services will be converging on this house.  Having arrived, they’ll find top-secret information in my hands and have every justification to search my vaults. They will discover further information of this kind and I’ll be imprisoned.  You will be exonerated, and restored to your smelly little apartment to solve crimes with Mr and Mrs Psychopath.”

_Would it assuage your guilt if I told him I’d ruin Mr and Mrs Psychopath if he didn’t get on his knees for you?_

“Mycroft has been looking for this opportunity for a long time. He’ll be a very, very proud big brother.”

The muscles up the length of his back all tightened at once.  His arms ached; his insides burned with remembered pain.  The image of Magnussen stroking his brother’s hands played over and over in his head on a loop.

_I covet your brother’s hands, Mycroft.  I covet his wet mouth, and the cleft of his arse.  I covet his screams, and his tears, and his resigned little sighs._

He tried to stop, to think of something, anything else, but his nipples hardened against phantom glass.  He lay pinned to the desk watching Magnussen caress his brother while whispering filth into his ears.  And then the tether binding him to his body snapped like a rubber band, and he was watching Sherlock struggling against the desk, crying ‘Red, red, red,’ as Magnussen pounded into him.

“ETA five minutes, sir.”

Mycroft’s blurred vision snapped back into focus at the sound of the voice.  His whole body tingled.  His blood felt fizzy.

“Are you alright, sir?”

“Apologies.  I was drugged earlier and I think I’m still feeling the effects.”

The pilot nodded.

There was nothing in his headphones now but static.  Wherever Sherlock was, he was outside the range of the bug Janine had planted inside the laptop.  Mycroft resumed his breathing exercises.  He had to have it together by the time they arrived.

His text alert pinged.

 

> i guess we got what we needed. hoping sherl doesn’t do anything stupid before u show up. y r u so late anyway?
> 
>  

He was tempted to switch off his phone but didn’t.  He wasn’t about to cut communications with Janine in a fit of pique, even if she was annoying.

Appledore was coming into view, an amber pinwheel glowing against the surrounding black hills.

 

> mary says anthea didn’t show. whats she done?
> 
>  

Three tiny silhouettes were backlit by the lights of the entrance to the main house.  Mycroft switched on his microphone.

“Sherlock Holmes and John Watson,” Mycroft called to the trio of figures on Appledore’s steps.  The sound of his voice broadcast over the loudspeaker amplified the feeling that he was still outside himself.  “Stand away from that man!”

Magnussen looked up at him.  Mycroft couldn’t see any detail at this distance, but could still imagine the smug expression on his face.  A weight pressed on his chest, and his stomach quivered.

Magnussen shouted something carried off by the roar of the helicopter.

Sherlock’s answer was swallowed by the wind.

“Sherlock Holmes and John Watson,” Mycroft ordered again.  “Step away.”

Magnussen stepped forward, waving his arms. “It’s fine!  They’re harmless!”

The commandos disguised in police uniforms began to surround the house.

“Target is not armed,” the radio crackled.  “I repeat, target is not armed.”

Sherlock and John turned towards each other.  Mycroft touched down in his body just long enough to remember that Sherlock still believed there were some kind of state secrets on the laptop, that he thought himself about to be arrested for treason.

“Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, stand away from that man,” he shouted over the loudspeaker.  “Do it now!”  Just get a few paces away so they could arrest Magnussen, and then he could explain, and then all would be well.

Sherlock edged closer to John, reaching for John’s coat pocket and his gun, calling out to Magnussen.

_I know you don’t trust me--_

Magnussen turned towards Sherlock.

Sherlock shouted something unintelligible followed by, “Merry Christmas!” and fired into Magnussen’s forehead.

Mycroft jumped when the gun clattered against the patio tiles, even though he couldn’t hear the sound.

Magnussen fell backwards and landed heavily on the stairs.

“Man down!  Man down!” the radio blared.

Had Mary not replaced John’s bullets with blanks?  Or had Sherlock fired at such close range it hadn’t mattered?

Sherlock and John shouted at each other, both with their hands raised in the air.

He heard his own voice coming from someplace far away.  “Stand fire!”

The commandos ran across the grass, rifles at the ready.

“Do not fire on Sherlock Holmes!  Do not fire!”

He floated above the helicopter, looking down at the whirling blades, at the curving walls of Appledore, at the marksmen kneeling in a semi-circle on the grass, laser sights aimed at his brother.

Sherlock shouted at John, presumably admonishing him to stay back, and then sank to his knees, folding his hands behind his head.  The downdraft from the helicopter blew his curls back from his face.  He kept his chin high.

Mycroft pulled off his headset.  There was nothing he could say which would benefit his brother to hear.

Sherlock looked up at him.  One of the laser sights floated above his right eyebrow, another trembled at the side of his nose.

_The moon cast silver light over Sherlock’s face, revealing angles that Mycroft hadn’t seen when he’d last been home at Christmas.  His brother’s cheeks had lost the last of their baby softness, he mused, as he brought his thumb up and brushed his tears away._

As on the night Redbeard had died, Mycroft could see the ripples floating out from the stone as it hit the water.  Sherlock had cast it this time, and the ripples would grow into waves, would mount into a riptide which would pull his brother under and drag him somewhere Mycroft couldn’t follow.

“Oh, Sherlock.”  He clutched the headphones to his chest.  “What have you done?”

 

END OF PART III


	16. The Ice Queen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter takes place outside the main act of the story, and is therefore not included in any of the four parts. I think a lot of you have been waiting for this one, myself included.

_Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, there lived a Prince, who was soft and plump, but also steely eyed and clever.  He was not the Crown Prince, and as such, could spend his days curled in his books while his father, King Siger, taught his elder brother Crown Prince Sherrinford the things he would need to rule their Kingdom.  Prince Mycroft (for so he was called) was a curious child, and interested in many things, but nothing fascinated him so much as the new princeling born to his mother, Queen Violet._

_The youngest Prince was called Sherlock, and he was so fair that his beauty was renowned even in neighboring kingdoms.  And as the Prince began to grow, it became apparent that in addition to being beautiful, Prince Sherlock was clever.  He was not quietly clever, like Mycroft.  Sherlock’s kind of genius demanded an audience; he made pronouncements about people and places by noticing details that were small enough that others overlooked them.  He amazed all of the courtiers with his talents, so much so that people began to come from everywhere in the kingdom with mysteries for the Princeling to solve.  Even the great Thaumaturge, Moriarty, came to witness Sherlock’s feats of deduction, thinking perhaps the boy was working magic.  But once he saw him up close, Moriarty realized that the boy was no magician, but something far rarer--a truly great mind in a world full of fools._

_Like Sherlock, Moriarty also saw things others did not see, and one of the things he saw was the way in which Prince Mycroft looked upon his younger brother.  Moriarty used his powers to look into Mycroft’s heart, and he knew that in secret, at nights when the castle was quiet, he crept into his brother’s bedchamber and watched him as he lay with the moonlight on his face, and knelt at his bedside, stroking his brother’s hair even as he stroked himself through his nightclothes.  The Princeling was innocent of his brother’s lasciviousness, and went to his Mycroft’s bed whenever he was lonely or frightened.  And Mycroft indulged his little brother’s every whim, submitting to being the subject of Sherlock’s experiments, playing at being pirates with him, even buying him a puppy, so that he would be Sherlock’s favorite._

 

The first woodcut was a profile of a painfully young Sherlock lying on his side in bed, eyes closed and face turned outward.  An adolescent Mycroft knelt on the bed beside him, clothed in a long nightshirt, one hand petting Sherlock’s hair, and the other hidden behind the curve of his brother’s body and presumably doing something unspeakable.

A magpie sat in the opened window, framed by the curtains which fluttered inwards as though carried by a summer breeze. Its head cocked towards the brothers, watching with sharp, knowing eyes.

 

_But Mycroft dared not act on any of his desires, for he knew that if his wicked wishes were known, he would never inherit the Kingdom.  Now, you may be wondering how Mycroft thought he would inherit the Kingdom at all, as the throne was meant to pass to his elder brother, Crown Prince Sherrinford.  However, the old King, Siger, died before the Princes were of age, and their mother ascended to the throne as Regent.  Queen Violet remarried Brian Holmes, Esquire, a minor nobleman of no consequence with nothing to recommend him, save that he was rumored to be the natural father of Prince Sherlock.  Prince Sherrinford was incensed at his mother’s choice of consort, and made known his objections to the union.  Prince Mycroft supported Queen Violet, and was amicable towards his new stepfather, which lifted him above his brother in her favor.  And it wasn’t just Queen Violet who began to prefer Mycroft to Sherrinford.  Sherrinford’s temperament had grown black, and he had fallen out of favour with the nobles at court, whereas Mycroft had become silver-tongued and was beloved by all.  And so Mycroft came to realize that he might wrest the throne from his brother._

_Crown Prince Sherrinford was bitterly jealous that everyone in his family, the court, and indeed, the Kingdom, preferred Mycroft to himself, and he suspected the worst of his brother, so when he left the realm to pursue his education in a foreign land, he sought the services of a magician.  Now, the Thaumaturge Moriarty, who had been watching the court since Prince Sherlock began solving mysteries, made his way in the world by providing spells and potions to those who could pay for them.  When he learned of Prince Sherrinford’s search, he paid him a visit and offered his services._

_“My Dear Prince Sherrinford,” said Moriarty, “tell me what is wrong, and I shall put it right for you.”_

_“Great One,” replied Sherrinford, “I fear my younger brother Mycroft means to supplant me, and take my rightful place as King.”_

_“You are right, Prince Sherrinford,” said Moriarty.  “Even now, your brother is plotting to have you accused of treason and executed.  I can tell you how to defeat him--but first, you must do something for me.”_

_“I will do anything to best my brother,” said Sherrinford._

_“There is a man in a neighboring Kingdom,” said Moriarty, “who calls himself ‘Charles the Magus,’ but really, he is no magus at all.  His true weapon is secrets, and he buys and sells them and uses them to manipulate people into doing his bidding, and thus pretends to work magic._

_“You must sell this man the secrets of your Kingdom, and you must also sell him Mycroft’s secret, which I will tell to you.  If you do these things, it will destroy him.”_

_“I will do all that you ask, Moriarty,” promised Sherrinford.  “Only tell me my brother’s secret.”_

_“I will show you,” said the magician, and he produced a silver bowl, and filled it with water mixed with a potion that would reveal to Sherrinford events that had happened long ago and far away._

The second woodcut was a portrait of Moriarty himself, in black robes with dagged sleeves, standing beside a basin next to Sherrinford--the likeness was so uncanny it made Mycroft’s breath catch in spite of the incongruity of the studded leather armour drawn upon his brother’s figure.  Moriarty and Sherrinford peered into the basin, which was tilted to reveal a portrait of a naked, emaciated Sherlock, limbs at all angles, lying atop a heap of cushions.  The long stem of an overturned opium pipe lay just beyond the reach of his limp fingers.

 

_Moriarty showed Sherrinford a vision of Sherlock when he was a young man, dark and fair, lying in a stupor in a house of ill repute.  Prince Sherlock had been a troubled youth; this much, Sherrinford already knew.  Unlike Sherrinford and Mycroft, Sherlock had never wanted to be a Prince, and he ran away from the castle as soon as he was grown, and moved among the common folk.  He took potions and powders to quiet the voices in his clever head.  He had no trade, and no money, and so lay with both maids and men for coin._

_More than once, Prince Mycroft attempted to convince Sherlock to abandon his dissolution and return to the palace.  But Sherlock always refused, preferring his powders and potions, which had so withered his body that Mycroft feared he would die.  Once, Mycroft even attempted to imprison his brother, confining him to a tower with healers of every kind, but Sherlock escaped and returned to his debauchery._

_Then Moriarty showed Sherrinford another scene, deep in the forest, where Mycroft approached a Robber Baron who forced anyone anyone who wanted to take the forest road to pay him a toll._

_“My brother is willful,” Mycroft told Baron Maupertuis, “and cannot be dissuaded from the path to perdition.  I know your clan kidnaps nobleman and ransoms them to their families.  I beg of you, abduct Sherlock.  Do not kill him, or do him grave injury, but make sure that he is frightened, and hurt him enough that he will see the error of his ways.”_

_The Baron took Mycroft’s coin and promised to do as he asked._

_Moriarty’s silver basin shifted again, and he showed Sherrinford the Baron’s bandits beating the young Prince Sherlock, and using him cruelly in other ways too depraved to be described.  Because the word of a bandit is worthless, and Sherlock was lovely, and there was nothing the Robber Baron loved better than punishing those who committed the crime of being born wealthy and beautiful._

 

The third woodcut was an iteration of an image Mycroft would have known anywhere: Sherlock drawn up onto his tiptoes, his back to the viewer, cuffed arms raised above his head.  The basement had been transformed into a medieval dungeon, complete with sconces on the wall, and the manacles around his brother’s wrists were heavy irons rather than padded leather, but Sherlock’s body was ripped straight from the Maupertuis film.  Each of the wounds on his buttocks and thighs had been hand painted in red with obsessive detail; the ruby stripes outlined in black were uncomfortably reminiscent of grill marks on raw meat.  

 

_After this last vision, Prince Sherrinford’s eyes were wide, because, cruel as he was, even he was stunned by the viciousness visited on his younger brother.  “Is this true?” he asked Moriarty.  Does Mycroft know he was betrayed?  Does Sherlock know he was betrayed by his own brother?”_

_“Mycroft knows,” said Moriarty.  “When he discovered what they had done, he was furious--though whether it was because they’d harmed his brother, or because they’d disobeyed him, who can say?  Perhaps he was even angry with himself, at the wickedness he knew lay in his own heart.  He threatened to burn the whole forest, and with it the Baron and all his bandits.  But it is an idle threat, for your youngest brother knows nothing, and so Mycroft cannot move against the Baron for fear that he will tell Sherlock, and destroy whatever remains of Sherlock’s love for Mycroft.”_

_“And now you want for me to tell this tale to Charles the Magus?” asked Sherrinford._

_“I will make you a potion,” answered Moriarty, “and if you pour it into a silver basin, as I have done, it will show Charles everything.  I will make you enough that you can show Sherlock as well, if you so desire.”_

_“And in return, you ask that I tell this man the secrets of my Kingdom.”  And here the Crown Prince was troubled.  “But won’t this mean that my Kingdom will be vulnerable to Charles the Magus?  Will he not use the secrets that I tell him against me?”_

_“Everything has its price,” said Moriarty._

_Prince Sherrinford hesitated, but only for a moment, for the force of his hatred of Mycroft was matched only by the force of his own ambition.  “I will pay your toll,” he promised.  “Only give me the potion.”  Sherrinford was proud, and aware of his own cleverness, and was convinced he could sell Charles the Magus some secret that would be of little value._

_And so he took the potion and journeyed to the next kingdom to meet with the Magus-who-was-not, but on the road, he was seen by one of the Baron’s bandits, a cowardly thief who was not convinced that the Baron’s blackmail would be enough to protect him from Prince Mycroft’s wrath.  This thief sent word to Mycroft of his brother’s intentions._

_Now, Mycroft knew the Magus’s true power was in secrets, and therefore saw him as an enemy, as did all who had dark secrets.  And he suspected also that his brother meant to betray him, as Mycroft and Sherrinford had been betraying each other since the two of them were Princelings._

_Mycroft procured the swiftest horses in his Kingdom, riding them to death to catch his brother.  He arrived at the gates of the Magus’s palace just as Sherrinford was emerging.  When he saw Mycroft, Sherrinford turned and fled into the Magus’s private garden, a maze of hedgerows higher than the tallest man.  But snow lay deep on the ground, and Mycroft chased his brother’s footsteps deep into the labyrinth.  Branches snagged on his clothes and tore his skin, and snowdrifts shifted in the wind which swirled up flurries of flakes around his feet._

_When he reached the heart of the Labyrinth, his brother awaited him, his dagger at the ready._

_“It is too late, Mycroft,” said Sherrinford.  “The Magus already knows what you have done to our brother.  Sherlock will know too, in time.”_

_“You will never return to the Kingdom,” said Mycroft, and drew his own dagger._

_They flew together like cockerels, blades flashing bright as they slashed and thrust, trading petty cuts.  Sherrinford was the stronger fighter, and he pushed Mycroft back, forcing him to retreat and furiously parry his brother’s blows.  But just as Mycroft’s back was to a hedge, Sherrinford began to stagger, as though drunk, and fell to his knees._

_For Prince Mycroft, who had known he couldn’t best his brother in a fair fight, had spread poison on his blade, which was even now freezing the blood in Sherrinford’s veins.  His dagger fell from his numbed fingers, and Mycroft closed in on him, grasping him by the hair and putting his own blade to his Sherrinford’s throat._

_“Thank you,” whispered Prince Sherrinford.  “You have spared me the sight of what you will become.”_

_Mycroft slit his brother’s throat, spilling a flood of steaming blood into the snow._

_After, Prince Mycroft tried to bury Sherrinford’s body beneath the drifts, but the blood kept soaking through, staining the cairn he raised over the body.  In the end, he left the mound of red and fled.  Gardeners who served Charles the Magus discovered the corpse and brought it to their lord, but the Magus kept Mycroft’s secret, as he kept so many other secrets.  He advised Queen Violet that Sherrinford had become lost in the labyrinth and had frozen to death in the snow.  The Queen wept before her courtiers, but in her heart, she was grateful to name her favorite son Crown Prince._

The fourth woodcut showed Mycroft, wrapped in a fur cloak, on his knees in the pink-stained snow, piling handfuls over Sherrinford’s body.  Fierce topiary monsters surrounded them, reaching for Mycroft with their clawed hands.  Bloody footprints scattered the ground around him.  Sherrinford’s foreshortened form protruded into the print’s foreground.  He lay with his head tilted back, eyes opened wide, arms spread cruciform, palms supine.  Mycroft was surprised Jim hadn’t painted stigmata in their centers.  

 

_And so, when Mycroft came of age, he succeeded Violet as Queen, but he ruled under the shadow of Charles the Magus, for he knew not the extent of Sherrinford’s betrayal, and lived in constant fear of how much his brother might have told.  So concerned was he that he began to study magic.  He surrounded himself with scrying devices and sent familiar daemons to listen in on conversations in both his own Kingdom and in neighboring lands, that he might have foreknowledge of any strike against him.  And he employed a powerful witch called Anthea, who was always at his side and cast wards to protect him._

_Queen Mycroft became a hard ruler, and his subjects began to refer to him as the Ice Man, a moniker previously used only by his enemies.  Even Prince Sherlock, who had once felt such affection for him, began to drift away, for Mycroft was now more interested in his magic mirrors and crystal balls than in Sherlock’s mysteries.  As for Mycroft, he was glad of the new distance between them, for his blood still grew hot whenever his brother was close._

_Even apart, however, Mycroft’s dreams were always of Sherlock.  Sometimes he dreamed of his brother’s lush lips around his member or his long limbs around his waist, other times of his brother’s lips twisting in anguish as his buttocks were beaten bloody.  In desperation, he cast a dark spell over his heart and ripped the offending organ from his breast, that it might never betray him again.  Embracing the name bestowed on him by his subjects, he filled the void in his chest with a block of ice.  His heart he placed within a box, which he in turn sealed within a vault.  But his heart still lived, and though he tried to forget it was there, it still beat, and it still beat for his brother._

The fifth woodcut showed Mycroft standing before a great stone vault, an ermine trimmed cloak around his shoulders and a crown of snowflakes, offset at odd angles so their points pressed into his forehead like thorns, upon his head.  He held an ornate box in his hands, opened to reveal a stylized but anatomical heart, painted blood red.  Within the marbled, crimson ink, lay a figure curled into the fetal position.  Small as it was, it was unmistakably a nude, child Sherlock.  His head was wreathed in a halo of curls, and he suckled his thumb between his perfect, heart shaped lips.  

 

_When Sherlock befriended a soldier recently returned from one of the Ice Man’s wars, Mycroft’s heart quivered inside its box, and a blackness began to grow upon it.  And Mycroft was not alone in his jealousy, for the Magician Moriarty had also felt his curiosity turn to passion as Sherlock grew up.  He saw in Sherlock a soul like to his own, the white apple cheek to his red.  And he knew that however much Sherlock might appreciate his soldier’s dogged loyalty, he could only ever give his heart to one he deemed his equal.  And Sherlock’s soldier pet was not his equal._

_The Magician began to leave clues for Prince Sherlock, a trail of breadcrumbs leading his soulmate to him.  He engaged a courtesan, Irene, called The Adder, to bring Sherlock an arcane scroll containing magic which she could not decipher, in the hopes that Sherlock would be curious enough to pursue the author.  The scroll alluded to a spell so powerful that it could open any lock in the Kingdom, releasing all the prisoners in any dungeon or exposing the treasures in any keep.  Prince Sherlock was intrigued._

_Mycroft, jealous and afraid for his own black heart within its vault, sent a gang of ruffians to kidnap Moriarty and imprison him, to beat and torment him into revealing the counterspell.  But Moriarty was resilient, and was armed with the knowledge of Mycroft’s misdeeds, and so they learned nothing from him and reported their repeated failures to Mycroft.  At last, in frustration, Mycroft resolved to speak with Moriarty himself._

_Thrice the Ice Man personally put Moriarty to the question, and each time he resisted.  In the end, Mycroft was forced to bargain with him, to trade truth for truth.  And even when the Ice Man lied to him, Moriarty saw through him, for he had the power to see things hidden and hear words unsaid.  And thus he forced the Ice Man to confirm much of what he already knew about Mycroft and Sherlock, and reveal still more which he’d previously suspected, while giving his captor next to nothing._

 

The sixth woodcut showed a torture chamber very like that of ‘Maupertuis the Robber Baron,’ though this time it was Jim who hung by his wrists naked, facing forward.  Mycroft stood behind him, a gloved hand wrapped around his throat.  His lips were pressed to Moriarty’s ear.  With his other hand, he held a slender cane stained with blood.  A red wheel crossed Moriarty’s chest, connecting his nipples.

Moriarty had drawn himself as Sherlock, and Mycroft as Zoric.  He clenched his fists until his fingernails broke the skin of his palms.

 

_Even though Mycroft was now Queen, his power was not unlimited.  He was entangled in the politics of his court and was obliged to make such deals as would please his nobleman.  Moriarty also had noble friends, including the powerful Lord Sebastian Moran, who labored to secure his release.  In the end, he had no choice but to free Moriarty, having no crime with which to charge him, and no pretext on which to keep him imprisoned._

_And so the Ice Man turned the Magician into the street, among the vagrants the young Prince Sherlock had lived with when he’d run away.  Some of these resented Sherlock for having reclaimed his wealth and title, privileges they did not possess.  Some of them desired to see Sherlock fall.  Some of Sherlock’s clients and colleagues wanted to see him fall, for that is what happens when lesser men see their betters perform feats of great intellect: they begin to wonder if the feats are feigned, or if they are the products of dark magic--but that is another tale._

_This tale is about the Ice Man.  Even he began to resent his brother, as Sherlock’s renown grew, and people began to pay great sums of money to the Prince and his pet to solve their problems for them.  Sherlock had never wanted Mycroft as Mycroft wanted him, but he had always needed his elder brother in his days of dissolution, and now that he had the Work, now that he had his soldier, he didn’t need Mycroft anymore.  The blackness which had begun to grow on the Ice Man’s heart when his brother had taken up residence with the soldier had now spread like rot over the entire organ, which threatened to burst from the envy and grief which pulsed within it._

_Perhaps that was why the Ice Man, who was skilled in the art of interrogation, revealed more to his prisoner than he extracted from him.  Perhaps Mycroft, too, wanted Sherlock to fall, in hopes that he would land back in the gutter and once again need his elder brother to pluck him out.  Perhaps the Ice Man saw in Moriarty what he had once seen in Maupertuis the Robber Baron--an opportunity to cut down to size a brat who’d grown too big for his britches.  Perhaps he didn’t even know that was what he wanted.  But Moriarty knew.  And Moriarty was willing to give Mycroft his heart’s desire--for a price._

_And so, the Thaumaturge created what he knew would be his penultimate potion, not unlike the one he’d brewed for Sherrinford, but far stronger.  For the contents of the bottle, if spilled into a basin, would show Sherlock everything that Mycroft had ever hidden from him, including the pictures painted on Mycroft’s heart that had so tormented him he’d torn it from his breast.  Moriarty understood the Ice Man’s pain, for Sherlock had beguiled him in a similar fashion, and he poured all his pain into his cauldron, that Sherlock might feel it also._

_For Moriarty had made Sherlock a promise, that if Sherlock could not find it in his heart to love him, that Moriarty would burn his heart within him.  And so, with heavy heart, Moriarty sent his final parcel, the bottled potion, in the claws of his magpie daemon, secure in the knowledge that once Sherlock had seen and felt the truth, that he would be left with a pile of cinders where his brother had his block of ice._

_Then Moriarty brewed one final potion--a poison, for himself.  He took the bottle with him to the top of his wizard’s tower and sat with his scrying vessel, watching as the magpie brought the parcel to Sherlock and lay it at his feet.  And then he waited for Sherlock to join him.  For the Thaumaturge knew that Mycroft’s betrayal would push Sherlock from the side of the angels, that he would either cross the abyss and join Moriarty, or else he would slip into it.  The final result of either choice would be the same: The block of ice within Mycroft’s chest would shatter, guilt and grief at what he’d done to his brother killing him from the inside, and his rotting heart within its vault would turn to dust.  And Sherlock and Moriarty would be together forever, their names spelled out in stars across the sky and scorched into the earth with cleansing fire._

_THE END_

 

The final woodcut was a full page illustration on the inside back cover.  The drawing showed Moriarty in his black robes standing next to Sherlock, who wore the same robes in white.  A red magpie stood at Sherlock’s feet, and at Moriarty’s, a white hare.  Each of them held one side of the box in the previous illustration, which was opened wide.  The heart, blown to ten times its previous size, floated above the box between them.  Within its red chambers, the naked figures of Sherlock and Mycroft stood entwined, lips locked and fingers in each other’s hair.  Their bodies filled the center of the heart, white against the background of blood.

  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG, so, I found a fanartist to commission to do some work for this! And I love it love it love it.
> 
> Please check out [horrible-device](http://horrible-device.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


	17. Part IV: Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience! The basic structure of this chapter has been in place for a long time, but it required a lot of research to get the particulars right. I hope you all think it's worth it. I also apologize in advance to any Slovenians reading this fic and remind everyone that the characters' opinions are not mine.

February 2, 2000

3:42 PM

 

“Oh,” Sherrinford’s body tensed and relaxed at once as he drew his long limbs into readiness, energy coiling like a greyhound preparing to sprint, or a snake preparing to strike.  “It’s you.”  He shut the door to the safe house behind him and slipped into the foyer.  

Mycroft leaned back against the sofa propped against the far wall, keeping his gun trained on Sherrinford.  “It’s me.”  

Sherrinford edged down the hall with small, silent steps.  He held his arms out to the sides to show he was empty handed, but didn’t go so far as to raise them over his head.  “I didn’t think Lady Smallwood would send you.”

He shrugged.  “I was the closest asset.”

“I thought she’d exclude you due to our familial connection.”

“Initially, she wanted to.”

“But you convinced her you were able to put Queen and country above your own blood.”

He let his lip quirk.  “Something like that.”

Sherrinford stepped into the living room.  The blinds were drawn, but the late afternoon sun bled through, staining the concrete walls ochre and catching in the red that threaded his hair.  Sherrinford and Mycroft both had Siger’s auburn hair--well, Sherrinford’s was actually more of a ginger, but Mycroft had learned early in his childhood the cost of referring to him as such.

Sherrinford’s eyes flicked over Mycroft.  “She’d never have sent you if she’d known how desperately you want to kill me.”

“Probably not.”  Mycroft gestured with his weapon.  “Disarm.”

Sherrinford arched an eyebrow and unbuttoned his coat--a long, double-breasted wool thing in a subtle blue and grey herringbone.  Mycroft kept a close eye on his brother as he retrieved his sidearm from the harness beneath his arm.  He dropped the magazine out of the gun to the floor with a clatter.

“The round in the chamber, too.”

Sherrinford smirked.  He opened the chamber and popped out the bullet, which clinked as it bounced off the lino.  Mycroft held his gun steady as Sherrinford walked across the room, unwinding a blue scarf from around his throat.  He threw it on the coffee table between them, then shrugged out of his coat and flung it over the back of a chair opposite Mycroft with a flourish.  He stepped back, spreading his arms wide.  “Aren’t you going to frisk me?”

Mycroft found Sherrinford’s flamboyance irritating.  Worse, Sherlock had begun imitating him since he’d come home from Miami, buying himself a black leather trenchcoat and swishing around in it like the star of an American action film.

Mycroft eyeballed Sherrinford, looking for any disruption in the lines of his suit, focusing on his ankles and forearms.  It was tailored close to his body, and there was no evidence of further holsters or sheaths.

“No?  I bet you’d be happy to frisk William.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re insinuating.”

Sherrinford’s slate grey eyes glittered.  “Don’t you.”

“I don’t know why you insisted on drawing Sherlock into a conflict between the two of us.”

Sherrinford sat in the chair draped with his coat.  “I didn’t go to Will--he came to me.  And if I hadn’t helped him, he’d have ended up dismembered and stuffed into an oil drum.  Or perhaps Hudson would have fed his corpse to the alligators in the everglades.”

Mycroft grimaced.  “You let Sherlock abuse your diplomatic immunity for one reason--to indebt him to you.  If you’d been serious about helping him, you’d have reported Hudson to the DEA and sent Sherlock home, to rehab.”

“You realize this is why Will reached out to me and not you, Mycroft.”  Sherrinford’s smile was crooked and oily.  “Do you know what he calls you?  His ‘arch-enemy.’  It’s rather ironic, really.  Will barely remembered me.  He was still in nappies when I left for Eton, and you worked so hard to keep me away from him whenever I came home to visit.  So, while you may have regaled him with tales of my dastardliness, he had so few of his own memories of me.  It was easy enough to convince him not everything you told him about me is true.”

Mycroft knew that Sherlock wasn’t as adept at he was at deductions, particularly about the motivations of other people.  Still, it had stunned him that Sherrinford had so easily beguiled Sherlock with enablement and superficial charm.

“You’ve only yourself to blame for making him so desperate to avoid you.  Always hovering, meddling, spying, prying.  Oh, and judging.  Let’s not forget that.  Will didn’t want to go to rehab and he didn’t want his boyfriend’s father to die, which is why he came to me.”

“Yes, and look how you repaid his trust.”

“I promised to save his life and the Trevors’, not prevent him from experiencing the consequences of his actions.  Prison was a better fate than what awaited him if he continued down the path he started in Miami.  Will’s a lost cause, Mykie.  You’ve probably set your career back five years with all the favors you called in trying to save him from himself.  You shouldn’t have intervened.”

“I had to.  Sherlock wouldn’t last a week in prison with that mouth of his.”

“‘That mouth of his’ would serve him well once he figured out whose bitch he’d need be.”

“You repel me.”

Sherrinford’s grin was all teeth.  “Someone’s projecting.”

Mycroft shook his head.  “What did Sherlock ever do to you?”

Sherrinford boggled at him.  “What did he--only destroyed our parents’ marriage.  Arguably he killed our father, if you consider our mother’s affair and the divorce as the trigger to his final depressive spiral.”

“I will not let you defame our mother.”

“Our parents were sleeping in separate rooms when William was conceived.”

“That hardly precludes--”

“I had a DNA test done, Mycroft.  I got a hair sample off Will when we were in Miami and compared it to my own.  We’re only a 24% match.”

Cold rushed down Mycroft’s spine and pooled deep in his stomach.  Sherrinford had insinuated as much at Siger’s funeral, and Mycroft had refused to hear him, had studiously avoided even thinking about what he’d dismissed as jealous ravings.  Sherrinford could be bluffing even now, trying to unsettle him.

“You know, Myke, you’re halfway clever but you’re willfully blind sometimes.  I wanted proof, but I didn’t need it.  Look at Will, Mycroft.  Then look at that man whose name you took in place of our father’s.  But then you’ve always had difficulty seeing anything to do with William clearly.  I’ve no idea why you’re so fixated on him.  He’s got the sort of waifish heroin chic look that’s fashionable now, I grant you, but he’s a moron, just like his father.  His recent foray into drugs and sex work are proof enough of that.”

“You encouraged his drug habit in Miami.”

“Yes, but it was _you_ who pushed him into whoredom by cutting him off from his trust fund when he got too deep into the drugs.”

The admonishment cut deep, though he couldn’t afford to show it.  Yes, he’d curtailed Sherlock’s stipend, but it wasn’t as though he’d turned him into the street.  He’d also paid for his brother’s flat, found him a job, and, when he’d begun to spiral, secured him a spot in one of the most sought-after rehab facilities in Britain.  Sherlock remained in rehab all of three days before running off, and a young MI5 analyst had discreetly brought Sherlock’s pornography career to his attention shortly thereafter.

“Were you afraid he’d squander his inheritance,” asked Sherrinford, “or did you just want to see the videos?”

Mycroft’s trigger finger twitched.  He briefly imagined Sherrinford’s brains spattered on the easy chair behind him.

“You know you can only pull off righteous indignation if you’re actually righteous?” Sherrinford smirked at him.  “Will might be too stupid to realize you’re infatuated with him, but I see through you.  You’ve always indulged yourself too much.  I note MI6 made you get control of your waistline, but you’ve apparently let your self-control lapse elsewhere.”

Sherrinford rocked back in his chair, propping his heel against his knee in a numeral four position.  “Do you think Will actually lost his virginity on camera, or was he shamming?  I’d have thought Victor had him first, but he was _very_ convincing.  And it did seem there was trouble in paradise already when I met Vic.  More’s the pity.  If Will had managed to keep him, we might have avoided a drug smuggler’s son marrying into our family.”

They’d never spoken of it directly, but it seemed clear enough to Mycroft that Sherlock and Trevor had been romantically entangled while they were in Miami, and that the coward had broken things off once they returned to London.  He’d salted the wounds by marrying _cousin Gloria_ , of all people.  Mycroft hadn’t been surprised when Sherlock had relapsed.

“When did you become so precious about the Scott name, Sherrinford?  You were an entirely selfish creature when we were children, motivated solely by personal ambition.  Now,” Mycroft pointed to the ring on his brother’s left hand, “you harbor delusions of carrying on Siger’s legacy.”  

“I was always conscious of our name and its history.  As you were, once.  Your obsession with our baby brother has made you forget your obligations to our family.”

Mycroft fixed his eyes on Sherrinford’s.  “Sherlock is my family.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’ve rationalized it all as very romantic.  Blood calling to blood.  Wrap your depravity in sentiment and martyr yourself while you’re at it.  There’s nothing noble about what you are, Mycroft, and nothing unique either.”

“I’ve done nothing untoward to Sherlock.”

Sherrinford laughed aloud.  “Oh, that’s rich.  Almost as rich as the _burek_ you treated yourself to this morning.”

“I haven’t!”  He heard his voice rising in pitch.  Why did he feel obliged to defend himself to his brother?

“No?  You’d be completely comfortable explaining your interest in Sherlock’s porn career to, say, Lady Smallwood?”

“If you spew this slander to her, she will see it for what it is: a desperate attempt to save your own traitorous skin.”

“You didn’t actually answer the question, Mycroft.”

“I still don’t understand why, after all your years of hard work--for which you’ve been amply rewarded--you would betray everyone who assisted you.”

Sherrinford unfolded his legs and leaned back in his chair, examining his fingernails.  “Do you remember when we were children, Mykie?  I’d climb the oak tree in the back yard, and you’d try to follow, and I’d climb higher and higher trying to lose you.  And then one day, you fell and broke your arm, and after, you never climbed again.  You were never able to push yourself past the fear of remembered pain.”

“That’s all you’ve been doing Sherri?  Trying to go where I won’t follow?  I was honestly hoping you believed you were encouraging neoliberalism in Eastern Europe, or something.”

“You were always the idealist of the family, not me.”

He saw it before it happened: the subtle forward shift in Sherrinford’s body language before he lunged across the coffee table and into Mycroft.  Mycroft’s fingers squeezed the trigger of his sidearm, but not before Sherrinford knocked the muzzle away.  The sound of the bullet punching through the coffee table made almost as much noise as the silenced shot itself.  For a few seconds they grappled; Sherrinford angled the gun towards Mycroft, who twisted away before the second round pierced the sofa behind him.

Sherrinford pulled Mycroft’s wrists down, wrenching the gun from his grasp, then aimed it back at Mycroft, who brought his foot up into a swift kick which knocked the weapon out of Sherrinford’s hand.  It clattered onto the floor behind them.  Sherrinford pushed himself to standing and leapt back out of range of Mycroft’s next kick, which sent the coffee table flying into Sherrinford’s shins.  His brother hissed and cursed beneath his breath but pulled himself into a fighting stance.  Mycroft mirrored him.

Sherrinford retreated, reaching into his shirt pocket.  Mycroft realized that Sherrinford’s ‘pen’ was a knife with a pocket clip as he pulled the small folding blade out and snapped it open in a single smooth motion.  Mycroft steadied his breathing and prepared to bleed.

Sherrinford rushed at him, bringing the knife down in a slashing strike aimed at his jugular.  Mycroft brought his right arm up and caught Sherrinford’s wrist, then batted it away with his left.

Mycroft kept close to his brother, blocking each strike with his forearms, rotating his wrists to redirect Sherrinford’s momentum and deflect the blade away again and again.  Sherrinford stabbed at his belly; he blocked down.  Sherrinford brought the blade back around and sliced at his throat; he blocked high.  Sherrinford stabbed at his chest; Mycroft maneuvered his arm in a circle, spiraling the blade away from him.  

He fell into a rhythm, meeting his brother’s slashes with blocks, weaving his arms sometimes under, sometimes over Sherrinford’s.  He kept the blade away from his face and torso, but stinging lines of pain twined around his arms like jellyfish tentacles.  Blood trickled from cuts on his forearms and elbows, soaking the edges of the slashes in his suit jacket.  

Sherrinford stabbed at his face; Mycroft grabbed his wrist.  He felt the blade slipping along his palm and curving around his hand, knew his brother meant to bring the knife over the back of his knuckles and drop him to his knees.  He twisted his hand away, slicing a gash across his palm as he did so.  His vision went red as the droplets which spattered Sherrinford’s shirt.

Sherrinford slashed at his neck.  Mycroft caught his forearm with his bleeding right hand and tilted the blade away from his carotid, but it still bit into the flesh of his left pectoral muscle.  He dug his fingernails into the meat of the pinky side of Sherrinford’s palm and twisted his brother’s hand against his shoulder.  The maneuver pushed the blade deeper into his protesting flesh until it deflected off his rib and slit a slash along the muscle, but it also locked Sherrinford’s wrist.

Mycroft brought his left arm up and over Sherrinford’s, putting downward pressure on the elbow joint until he brought his brother to his knees, prying the knife from Sherrinford’s grasp as he did so.  After flinging the weapon aside, he wrapped his bloody fingers around Sherrinford’s wrist.  He twisted it, then shifted his weight until his brother collapsed, landing heavily on his palm at Mycroft’s feet.  Mycroft’s torn pectoral pulsed in time with the timpani in his ears.  He adjusted his hold on his brother’s hand, switching into a thumb lock, bending the joint back.  

_Do you forfeit?  Say it.  Say you forfeit._

He should knee Sherrinford in the face, break his arm, bring his heel down on the back of his brother’s neck.  He’d already hesitated once, failed to pull the trigger when he’d known Sherrinford would dive for the gun.  It was still on the floor behind the easy chair.  If he didn’t incapacitate Sherrinford now, he ran a risk of being at the wrong end of it.

“Can’t do it, can you, Mykie,” Sherrinford hissed.

Mycroft twisted his brother’s thumb until his face contorted in agony.

The sound of wood splintering filled the air.

He looked up to see two agents outside the door they’d just kicked in, guns drawn.  He nodded, and they charged into the room.  The first put the muzzle of his weapon against the back of Sherrinford’s head.  The other bent to pick up Mycroft’s gun from the floor.  Mycroft kept hold of his brother’s hand until the other agent tapped him on the shoulder.

“Are you alright, sir?”

He nodded, and slowly released his grip on Sherrinford’s fingers.  Vertigo made his head swim, and he staggered back, curling his burning hand into a fist.  He scanned the floor for the knife, spotting the flash of red and silver.  He picked it up.  Such a small thing; the blade was less than three inches.  It folded with the lightest press of the release button, and Mycroft tucked it into his trouser pocket.  He gathered Sherrinford’s scarf from the coffee table and wound the length of blue fabric around his palm, taking slow breaths to try to stem the flow of adrenaline surging within him.  He sank down on the sofa where he’d been sat a few minutes before and pressed his wrapped hand to his shoulder.  It throbbed dully beneath the waves of endorphins flooding his bloodstream, but he didn’t think it was dangerous.  He covered his bleeding hand with his good one and pressed both hard against the wound.

The two agents had restrained Sherrinford with thumb cuffs while Mycroft composed himself.  His brother knelt, his hands behind him, flinty gaze as hard and sharp as the blade he’d wielded moments before.

Mycroft took a shuddering breath.  “It was Lady Smallwood’s preference I handle this discreetly.”  He paused, breathing through his nose.  “I had authorization to use as much force as necessary, of course.  But if I had shot or stabbed or strangled you as I might wish to, then I’d have had to pin a murder on someone.  Slovenia is a relatively insignificant country, but it’s still difficult to kill any British ambassador without causing some kind of international incident.”

He glanced at his overcoat, folded on the sofa.  “Murcher.  My coat pocket.”

The man nodded and crossed the room, riffling through Mycroft’s coat and retrieving a capped syringe.

Sherrinford’s eyes narrowed.

“This way, you’re just another cautionary tale about the increasing use of opiates in Eastern Europe.  It crosses all strata of society, unfortunately.  Those with high-pressure jobs and a family history of addiction are perhaps especially likely to fall victim.”

Sherrinford’s lips curled.  “And if my death should put the fear of god into William, so much the better?”

“One can only hope it cures Sherlock of his desire to emulate you.”

“You were ever the multi-tasker.”

Mycroft refused to meet Sherrinford’s eyes, staring at the brown stains blooming on the scarf beneath his fingers instead.

“There’s a first aid kit in the loo,” said Murcher.  “Do you want me to patch you up?”

Mycroft shook his head.  “I’ll see to it myself.  Take care of him.”  He stood slowly, careful to maintain pressure on his wound.

“ _Take care of_ me!?”  Sherrinford shouted.  “That’s it?  You don’t even have the stones to stay and watch?”

Mycroft ignored his brother.  “Please don’t disturb me,” he told Murcher.  

“You’re a fucking hypocrite, Mycroft!”

He made his way down the hall, refusing to look back.

“He molested our brother!”

Mycroft hesitated outside the bathroom door, unsure if he wanted to open it with his bleeding hand or the one attached to his aching shoulder.

“Sherlock confided in me when we were in Florida!”

He opened it with his left hand.  His shoulder objected.

“He set me up because I confronted him!”

Mycroft shut the door behind him and leaned against it.  Sherrinford continued to scream accusations from the other side, but his words were becoming slurred.  Mycroft rested his head against the wood and closed his eyes.  He took a breath, held it, then let it out.  The pain in his hand and shoulder flared and died with each surge of blood in his veins.  Breath, count, hold, count, release, count.

After a moment, he glanced down and gingerly peeled back the scarf, soaked brownish purple with blood.  The wound still oozed.  He edged away from the door and stood before the sink.  

Sherrinford retched.  Mycroft swallowed his own bile.  The porcelain tilted and swirled in front of him, spiraling towards the drain.  He curled his fingers around the edge of the sink to steady himself and bent his knees to keep them from locking.

Once the room stopped moving, Mycroft discarded the scarf in the bin next to the toilet, then opened the medicine cabinet.  He removed the first aid kit, a well-stocked, multi-compartment metal box.  His first objective was to do something about the tide of pain beginning to rise now that the adrenaline was dissipating.  He riffled through pill packs, looking for analgesics, pushing aside the opioids to grab paracetamol and naproxen, chewing and swallowing the maximum doses each.  Acrid granules coated his tongue.

The agents argued amongst themselves in the other room.  Probably, he should try to eavesdrop, start planning what he would tell Lady Smallwood, but he felt himself unable to focus on anything except stemming his bleeding.  He found a pair of safety shears and cut off the left sleeve and lapel of his jacket and the dress shirt beneath.  His shirt stuck stubbornly to his arm despite his attempts to shrug it onto the floor.  He snarled at his right cuff before tearing into it with his teeth, tasting bitter blood.  A cotton thread stuck in his mouth.  He bit the button off, spat it onto the floor, and shook his right arm, knocking the tattered remains of the sleeve free.

Now that his wound was visible, Mycroft thoroughly washed his hands with antibacterial soap, wincing as it stung the gash on his palm, then splashed water over his shoulder, careful not to disturb the forming clot.  It would require sutures.  There were suture kits in the first aid kit, but Mycroft was no surgeon and his hands were shaking badly.  He tore open a packet of butterfly closures, gingerly closing the laceration, which oozed as he pressed against it.  He found a sterile gauze bandage and pressed it on top of the wound.  The kit contained bandages imbued with clotting agents as well, but he thought that would probably just vex whoever would clean and stitch his wound in a few hours.  Adhesive tape, torn into strips off with his teeth, fixed the bandage in place.

The most serious bleeding stopped, Mycroft grabbed a thermometer and a stopwatch from the first aid kit and sank to the floor, leaning against the bathroom door.  He took his pulse.  Elevated, but that was to be expected.  He started counting again, measuring his respiratory rate this time.  The wood at his back transmitted the sounds of Sherrinford’s breaths from the other room.  They were somewhere between gurgles and snores.  Mycroft realized he’d lost count of his own breaths and that he’d have to start over.  He closed his eyes, surprised to find tears welling beneath his closed lids.  He wiped them away with trembling fingers.

He took his temperature.  A little low, but not a cause for immediate concern.  He probed his body with his fingers, pressing at any spots that felt tender, checking himself for signs of internal damage.  Apart from a couple of bruises on his torso where Sherrinford had punched him with his off hand, he didn’t find anything of note.  After his shoulder, his forearms had taken the brunt of the damage.

Fairly certain he had no other, unseen, injuries, Mycroft struggled to his feet, steadying himself by clutching the door handle to stop the room swaying around him.  He turned the water on again and washed his hands and forearms.  Red blood diffused to pink in the sink.  He covered the lacerations on his forearms with steri-strips, then wrapped his arms in gauze from wrist to elbow.  He looked rather like a cartoon mummy, swathed in white and red, but he supposed it was preferable to dripping blood everywhere.

He forced himself to look up at the mirror, to meet his own eyes.  They were swollen and bloodshot.  He’d have to stay here a few more minutes if he didn’t want Murcher and Rance to know he’d been weeping.  He promised himself he would shed no more tears.  What he’d done here had been necessary--more than that--it had been _right_.

Sherrinford would have killed him.  Though he could hardly call it self-defense, since he’d come here to kill Sherrinford.  And not just because Lady Smallwood had sent him here, though that had certainly been convenient.  He’d fantasized about killing Sherrinford since their childhood years, though he hadn’t resolved to actually do so until he’d betrayed Sherlock.  Still, he had acted according to orders, eliminated a traitor from the ranks of the FCO.  And he’d done it cleanly.  The agents would have Sherrinford back at his flat within the hour; all Mycroft needed to do was oversee the staging of the scene.  Possibly, eliminating his own brother might quell some of the grumbling about nepotism that had started after he’d made Sherlock’s drug charges go away.

His palm was still bleeding.  He hadn’t bothered to bandage it, concerned it would hinder him in tending to his other wounds.  He probed the gash with his finger.  It was deep, down through the dermis.  Blood welled beneath his fingertip and reddened his hands.  He rinsed it away.

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry I had to put you in that position,” said Lady Smallwood.  The skin around her eyes was tight.

Mycroft shrugged with only his right shoulder.  The left one still twinged beneath the dressing.  “Needs must.”

She shifted in her chair.  “Your brother made some rather shocking accusations about you.”

Mycroft kept his face impassive.

“You didn’t refute them.”

“I didn’t believe they were worth dignifying with a response.  I’d just asked Murcher and Rance to administer the overdose.  His words were a desperate attempt to make them doubt me, nothing more.”

She nodded, but her lips were pursed.  She opened her desk drawer and drew out an envelope which she passed to Mycroft.  He could see the outline of a ring through the paper.

“I understand this belonged to your father.”

“Brian Holmes is my father.”  He was _their_ father, his and Sherlock’s.  Sherrinford hadn’t ever accepted Mycroft taking Holmes as his surname, didn’t understand that regardless of who his father was, Sherlock could never be only half his brother.  It wasn’t blood that mattered, not in the end.  

Lady Smallwood hesitated.  “Still, I thought you might like to have it.”

Mycroft wanted nothing to do with Siger or Sherrinford or the Scott family legacy.  Still, he tucked the envelope into his jacket, brushing Sherrinford’s knife, which was clipped inside the pocket of his dress shirt.  “Thank you.”

“Now that you’re feeling better, I’m requesting that you report for debriefing.”

“Of course.”

She fixed her eyes on him.  “I’ll see to it that Ambassador Scott’s remarks stay out of the official record.”

“I appreciate that.”  He regretted what it might mean for Murcher and Rance.  They’d done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Lady Smallwood forced a smile.

“You’re dismissed.  Get some rest, Mycroft.”

“Thank you.”

He left Lady Smallwood’s office and retreated to confines of his own.  It was a cramped, windowless thing.  There would be bigger, lighter offices in his future, he supposed.  There were already awed whispers following him in the halls.  He had a new nickname now: Ice Man.  He wasn’t yet sure what he thought of it.  It was better to be feared than loved, he supposed.

He tore open the envelope with his good hand and shook the ring into his palm.  It was a simple band of yellow gold.  It had been Siger’s wedding ring, which he’d persisted in wearing even after Mummy had left him and remarried, until he’d crashed his car in a drunken stupor and it had passed to Sherrinford.

_Your obsession with our baby brother has made you forget your obligations to our family._

Sherlock is your brother first, Mycroft admonished himself.  Whatever other feelings he might harbor for Sherlock, which had only intensified since he’d come so close to losing him, his first duty was to protect him.  He slid the band onto his ring finger.  It didn’t fit him; Siger and Sherrinford had both had larger hands than his.  He moved the ring to his right hand, where it slid snugly in place.  He held his bandaged hand out and surveyed it.

_Sherlock is my family._

He made a fist.  The laceration across his palm still twinged.  Mycroft made himself a promise, brought the ring to his lips, and kissed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank [medicbymax ](http://medicbaymax.tumblr.com/)for answering [my ask](http://anarfea.tumblr.com/post/135354173648/how-would-you-treat-a-minor-stab-wound). His blog is an invaluable resource for whump writers, and I heartily recommend it.
> 
>  


	18. Part IV: Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while since I've updated. In my defense, the chapters are getting longer. This is the longest one yet, and it needed to be. Thanks to beyoncees_fiance for helping me say what I meant to say.

January 1, 2015

3:26 PM

 

“This whole thing was my fault.”

Sherlock turned a listless gaze towards Mycroft.  The broken light of the skylights cast shadows over his face.  His skin had a ghastly waxy texture and his eyes were bloodshot and swollen.  Naloxone was a lifesaving drug, but not without side effects.  

Mycroft couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the last time Sherlock had been here, before he’d set out to ruin John’s proposal, when Anthea had helped him into his coat like a squire dressing a knight in armour.  Now, he sat hunched down in one of the metal chairs opposite Mycroft, collar drawn up around his chin.  Slumped as he was, the coat made him look smaller rather than more imposing.  

“I should have told you this before, but I wasn’t certain my plan would be successful and I didn’t want to give you false hope.  I’m afraid I created the impression that I was doing nothing.”  He took a deep breath.  “The plane was always going to turn around, Sherlock.  I was never going to let them send you back to Serbia.”

“I thought you said you weren’t certain.”

“I made certain.”  By making promises he had no intentions of keeping, forging an unholy alliance which would fall to pieces when he failed to hold up his end of the bargain, if not before.  

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed.  “Moriarty’s return was your doing, then?  The ‘miss me’ broadcast.”

“Yes.  I’ve spent the last week doing everything to secure you a pardon--”

_Like a proper big brother._

“--like I promised I would.”  He paused.  “If I’d have known that your reaction would be so … extreme, I would have let you know that I had a plan, even though I was still unsure of the outcome.  But I’d hoped--you said, ‘we wouldn’t do that to John.’”

“I had every faith you would craft a heroic narrative for me.  Something that would make John proud.”

“You made a _list_.”  His voice was high and thin in his own ears.

“I’m sorry.  But I couldn’t go back to Serbia.”

“You don’t have to, now.”

“No.  Now I’ve got to unveil Moriarty.”

Mycroft licked his lips.  “About that.”  He glanced down, picking imaginary lint from his trousers as Sherlock’s eyes burned into the top of his head.  “I made something of a deal with the devil to arrange Moriarty’s return, and as soon as she--”

“So it _is_ a she.”  Sherlock’s eyes gleamed in the afternoon gloom.

He looked up.  “Yes.  And Sherlock, she is not to be underestimated.  Unfortunately, she--”  He could feel sweat beading at his forehead, collar, armpits.  He couldn’t do this.  He had to do this.  “She was the source of the … of the leverage that Magnussen had on me.”

Sherlock frowned.  “You mean on me.  He had us all laid up like a row of dominoes.  I’m your pressure point; John is my pressure point; Mary is John’s pressure point.”

Mycroft winced.  “Magnussen never needed Mary and John to get to me.  He needed them to get to you, to get you to Appledore.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“It isn’t.  Magnussen already ….”  His throat tightened; he had meant to say ‘ _had me_ ’ and knew it would imply more than he wanted.  “I was already ‘under his thumb’ long before you took Mary Watson’s case.”

Sherlock frowned.  “You said this new Moriarty gave Magnussen blackmail material on you.  What was it?”

Mycroft took a deep breath.  “When I was … when I interrogated James Moriarty.  We agreed, that I would tell him things about you … things which he could use to ruin your reputation.”  He glanced up at Sherlock, who watched him with folded arms.  “I … underestimated him.  Let him get under my skin.  And I said … things.  Things I never meant to say.  Not just about you, but about me.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“About … the night Redbeard died.”

Sherlock’s face hardened.  “Yes, Magnussen mentioned Redbeard.”

Mycroft clutched at the arms of his chair and snatched a breath through his nose, then another and another.  Too quick, too shallow.  He should breathe into a bag.  Black ants swarmed in front of his eyes.  He sat behind his own shoulder and watched himself watching Sherlock. “What--did he say?”

Sherlock sat up in his chair, his full attention on Mycroft now.  “Just ‘Redbeard.’  What did you expect him to say?”

Mycroft shook his head, trying to clear it.  “I didn’t know he knew anything about Redbeard.  He never mentioned Moriarty had told him about that.”

“Told him _what_.”

“I’m sorry.  This is difficult for me.  What you said about you being my pressure point--it’s true, but not the way you think.  My pressure point was--is--my feelings for you.”

“Yes, sentiment clouds judgment.  You made that clear, that night.”

He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk, and rubbed at his temples.  “I hurt you that night and you didn’t know why.  I couldn’t tell you why.  I’m trying--” His words caught in his swollen throat.  “I’m trying to tell you now.”

He closed his eyes; whatever he might learn by looking at his brother’s face wasn’t worth what it would cost him to see it.  “That night … I felt things.  For you.  Which frightened me.  Of which I am ashamed.  And it was these … sentiments, that Moriarty deduced, and that Magnussen used to blackmail me.”

For a second, the room was silent, save for the faint hum of his laptop.

Then Sherlock’s breath caught.

Mycroft opened his eyes.  Sherlock’s wide eyes were fixed on his.

He lowered his forearms to the desk, crossing them in front of his body.  “You have questions.”

His brother gripped the arms of his chair.  “Will you give me honest answers?”

“To the best of my ability.”

Sherlock’s lips thinned.  “These … sentiments of which you are ashamed.  What _exactly_ is it you feel for me.  Love?  Lust?  Some sort of obsessive fixation?”

Mycroft forced himself to meet Sherlock’s gaze.  “I love you, Sherlock.  Not just in a … filial way.”

“You’re attracted to me.  Sexually.”

His face heated.  “Yes.”

“And this started … the night Redbeard died?  Jesus, Mycroft.  I was ten.”  Sherlock covered his mouth with the back of his hand.

Mycroft wondered if his brother was going to be sick.  He supposed it would be an appropriate response.  “I know.  I knew that it was wrong, and I swear that I … I didn’t ….” He looked at Sherlock, begging him to understand, not to make him say it.  “But I wanted ….”

“You wanted--to touch me.”

He flinched.  “Yes.  No.”

“Which is it, Mycroft?”  Sherlock hissed through white lips.

“I … desired you, so I wanted to.  But I knew that would hurt you, so I didn’t want to.  But I did.  That’s why I made you leave.”

Sherlock’s fingers curled into a fist beneath his chin.  “You told me I was being a baby, clinging to you.  That I’d let sentiment cloud my judgement.”  He froze.  “That’s what you meant after the wedding.  You brought up Redbeard; you weren’t talking about _loss_.  You were talking about _pressure points_.”

“I--was afraid Magnussen might use your feelings for John to hurt you.”

“Leave John out of this, Mycroft.”

Mycroft raised both palms in supplication.

Sherlock thrust his chin forward.  “And that’s it?  Moriarty told Magnussen your secret, and so you let him do as he pleased?”

“It was slightly more complicated than that.”  Mycroft opened his desk drawer and lifted out Moriarty’s book.  It felt heavier than he remembered.  He set it down in front of his brother.  His skin was stretched too taut, and tingled.

“Moriarty rather--embellished the topics we discussed together.  I saw what a profound influence he had on you.  And I thought--I was afraid--that he’d be able to convince you of this pack of lies.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow as he read the title.  “The Ice Queen?”  He cracked the cover with trembling hands.  His nails had been bitten to the quick.  He ran his fingers over the book jacket pocket which contained the DVD.  A winged IOU had been stencilled onto the heavy paper.

“The DVD contains a film of Moriarty reading the book.  Dressed as--”

“Richard Brook.”  Sherlock grimaced.  “A few days before the Lazarus operation, I was riding in a cab.  The cabby was watching QVC, and all of the sudden the picture got interrupted by a short film.  ‘The Story of Sir Boasts-a-lot.’  And then it turned out the cabby was actually Jim.”

“You never mentioned.”

“I didn’t think it was relevant at the time.”

Sherlock reached across the desk and pulled Mycroft’s laptop to him.  He flipped the lid open and typed ‘Redbeard’ into the lock screen.  Green and gray light from the display flickered over his brother’s face.  

_Hello, Sherlock.  Did you miss me?_

Sherlock worried his lip, turning the pages of the book in time with the film.  Jim’s mocking voice lilted in the background.

_In secret, at nights when the castle was quiet, he crept into his brother’s bedchamber and watched him as he lay with the moonlight on his face, and knelt at his bedside, stroking his brother’s hair even as he stroked himself through his nightclothes._

The hum of the laptop grew to a whine, then a scream.  Mycroft grabbed his desk with both hands to stop it from sliding away from him.  Or perhaps he was the one sliding away from it, away from his body, which was slick with sweat beneath his shirt.

_After this last vision, Prince Sherrinford’s eyes were wide, because, cruel as he was, even he was stunned by the viciousness visited on his younger brother.  “Is this true?” he asked Moriarty.  “Does Mycroft know he was betrayed?  Does Sherlock know he was betrayed by his own brother?”_

The skin around Sherlock’s eyes tightened as he shot Mycroft a glance over the top of the laptop.  Mycroft fell back into his body with a jolt, and then fell through himself as though Sherlock had kicked over his chair.  He kept tumbling backwards, over and over, as though he’d just disembarked a carnival ride.  Sherlock frowned and glanced back at the laptop.

At last the flickering stopped, replaced with a steady white gleam.  Sherlock shut the laptop lid with a snap.  He looked up at Mycroft.  “How much of this--” he tapped the book “--is true?”

Mycroft’s chair sucked him into itself, clinging to his limbs like quicksand.  Words stuck to the roof of his mouth.  “The general … theme … is true.  The details are all fiction.”

“The ‘theme.’”  Sherlock’s voice was cold.  “I feel like I’m back in sixth form discussing _Hamlet_.  Imagine I’m stupid, Mycroft--that shouldn’t be difficult for you.  Summarize it for me.”

“I--” His chest constricted.  “The … sentiments.  The desire, the … jealousy.  The fear of them.  The attempt to excise that part of myself, to keep it from you, that’s all true.  All of the … allegations of any specific acts--”

“ _Name_ them.  I won’t do it for you again.”

He swallowed.  “I never molested you, Sherlock.  I most certainly did not contact Baron Maupertuis and ask him to--to orchestrate your rape.”  The word tasted strange.  He could feel the letters hanging in the air between them, spelled out in smoke.  “And I didn’t murder Sherrinford to conceal my non-existent involvement with Maupertuis.”

“But you’ve seen the Maupertuis film.”

“I have.”

“And you did kill Sherrinford.”

Mycroft stared at his folded hands, at the ring which had been Siger’s and then Sherrinford’s.

“I’m not a child anymore, Mycroft.”  There was a petulance in his brother’s voice that belied his words.

“I suppose you could argue I was the one most directly responsible for his death.”

Sherlock nodded, as if that were well and good.

Mycroft studied his brother’s expressionless face.  He couldn’t tell if Sherlock was trying hard to conceal his emotions or if he was still too much in shock to feel anything.

“Let’s start with the film,” said Sherlock.  “I scoured the dark web for years, off and on again, looking for it.  I found a couple of other films in the … series.  I heard the name Baron Maupertuis, even met a person who claimed to have seen the livestream.”  His lip twitched.  “But no sign of the actual footage.  I should have known if anyone could find it it would be you.”

Mycroft licked his lips.  “I didn’t find it.  It was brought to my attention while I had James Moriarty in custody.”  He was loath to bring up Lestrade’s role unprompted.  He’d burdened Sherlock with enough terrible knowledge without mentioning that his friend and mentor had been the one to discover the files.  “I believe Moriarty arranged for me to find it.  That he thought it would unnerve me.”

“Did it?”  Sherlock kept his expression neutral, his tone nonchalant.

“Of course it did.”  He felt a twinge in his chest, they way he had when Sherlock asked why Mycroft didn’t want him to take the undercover job in Serbia.  “It accomplished exactly what he wanted.  I was compromised, unable to operate as an effective interrogator.”

“So it would seem, if Moriarty managed to deduce your incestuous feelings.  You know, I’m still trying to piece together how exactly that happened, Mycroft.  And while I’m seeing several possibilities, the most probable is that you _enjoyed_ the Maupertuis film.”

Mycroft’s pulse pounded.

Sherlock leaned forward in his chair, and for a moment, his his gaunt face was flecked with shaving foam, glowering at him from beneath the shadows the barber’s light cast beneath his eyebrows.  “Yes.  You definitely enjoyed it.  And then you walked into Moriarty’s cell with that guilt and shame wafting off you, and Jim honed in on it like a shark on chum.”

“Sherlock, that film was the single most horrific thing I have ever seen in my life.  Knowing that … _that_ happened to you, that I wasn’t there to stop it, is my greatest regret.”

“And yet, when you had a chance to stop it, in Serbia, you put your feet up and watched instead.  You know, so very many things make sense, now that you’ve admitted you’ve wanted to _fuck_ me since I was ten years old.”

Mycroft fought the urge to squirm.  “Sherlock, it wasn’t--I don’t expect you to understand, or believe me, but it wasn’t … it was more complicated than that.”

Sherlock leveled his gaze at him.  “Try me.”

Mycroft licked his lips.  “I--”

He remembered the electricity crackling along his nerves like ozone, the swampy heat of the infernal coat, the stripes of blood on Sherlock’s back.

“I dissociated.  I--it was like watching--”

_A narrow band of skin on the swell of each of Sherlock’s cheeks opened, revealing skin equally white beneath, like score marks on baking bread._

“--someone else.”

Sherlock’s eyes slitted.  “You know for a moment there, Mycroft, I thought you were going to say it was like watching the Maupertuis film.”

“It … was.”

Sherlock’s nostrils flared.  “You’re telling me you couldn’t stop my being tortured because you were having flashbacks of watching me being raped?  You were remembering something you’d seen.  I was reliving the event, and I still managed to wrest the key from my captor and get him to leave the room.”

“I’m attempting to explain, Sherlock, not excuse.  I didn’t intervene quickly enough.”

“You didn’t intervene at all, though that’s not the worst of it.  You could have revealed yourself as soon as we were alone.  But you kept speaking to me in Serbian, you allowed me to think--you grabbed me by the hair, Mycroft.  Were you watching someone else do that, too?  Or maybe you were imagining that you were him, that you were--”

_Danko, take our willful slut down a peg._

“No!”  Mycroft shouted.

Sherlock glared at him, but remained silent, expectant.

“I was--” Mycroft licked his lips, unable to meet Sherlock’s baleful gaze.  “I was afraid.”

Sherlock slammed his fist into the desk.  “I was chained to the sodding _wall_!”

“Not of you, Sherlock.  Of me.  I wanted so badly to comfort you, hold you.”

“And this frightened you.”

“Yes.  Because you would have relaxed.  You’d have let your guard down, and I--”  He made a fist, squeezing until Sherrinford’s ring dug into his finger.  “I would have kissed you,” he admitted.  “You’d have been too disoriented to resist me.  You might even have welcomed the contact after days of torture--I’m not trying to defend what I did.  But I knew that if I threatened you, you’d be angry with me instead of … vulnerable.”

“You hurt me to keep from hurting me.  Like you did after Redbeard died.”

“Yes.”

Sherlock snorted.  “It’s a good story, Mycroft.  You were just trying to keep the distance between us, to keep yourself from acting on these monstrous impulses of yours.  But I’m not ten anymore.  You couldn’t have touched me without me deducing your ulterior motives.  And that was the real reason you held back, wasn’t it?  You feared discovery--not yourself.”

He rose from his chair slowly, seeming to grow into the coat.  “However you attempt to justify it, you made the choice to hurt me, again and again.”  He placed his fingertips on Mycroft’s desk and leaned in.

“Brother mine, I’m not unacquainted with sadism.  In my experience, it isn’t about pain; it’s about power.  You may derive some pleasure from my suffering, but what really gets you off is making decisions for me.  You’ve always enjoyed making life-and-death decisions for others, even your own blood.  Perhaps especially your own blood.  You’re a veritable Roman paterfamilias.”  The corner of his lip pulled into a sneer.  “Though I suppose it’d be a fraterfamilias, in your case.”

There was a practised air to Sherlock’s speech, as though he’d thought about this for a long time.  He wondered for how long Sherlock had known, or suspected, that he’d killed Sherrinford.

Mycroft took a shaking breath and looked up at his brother.  “There is a measure of truth to what you say.  I told myself for a long time that I had done the best I could for you, by pushing you away, by making sure that I never touched you, but there were times--”

“When you took pleasure in the control you had over me.”  

He nodded.

Sherlock tilted his head to the side, staring down at him.  “This obsession of yours has little to do with me as a person.  You find me most desirable when I am least myself.  When I’m crying in your bed, passed out on the floor, chained to a wall--that isn’t me, Mycroft.  That’s you wanting me to need you.”

He forced himself to hold Sherlock’s gaze.  “Sherlock, I don’t deny the correctness of your observations.  I was drawn to your vulnerability, and to the sense of … utility, that I felt in protecting you.  But that’s not ….” He looked away.  “Sherlock, I’m living in a world of goldfish.  And you’re the only other _person_ in it.”

For a moment, Sherlock’s expression softened, and then the mask was up again.  His brother was not about to show him any part of his underbelly, now, perhaps not ever again.

Sherlock began to pace in front of his desk.  “This is why you haven’t found yourself a goldfish, isn’t it?  And here I thought you were lonely.  I imagined I saw myself in you.  And now I discover that all along, you were imagining yourself in me.”  He smirked at his own pun.

“God, Sherlock, you make it sound so--sordid.”

His brother threw his hands in the air.  “Isn’t it?  Aren’t you ashamed?”

“Of course I’m ashamed!  You were a child.  You are my brother.  And I loathe myself for wanting you.  But I also love you, Sherlock.  I admire your tenacity, your resilience.  I respect your intellect, even if you’ve chosen to utilize your talents differently than I have my own.  You’re … precious to me.  Not all my feelings for you are base.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.  “Yes, yes.  My loss would ‘break your heart,’ so you’ve said.”

“It wouldn’t just break my heart, Sherlock.  It would break _me_.”

Sherlock stopped pacing and whirled on him.  “And I asked before, and you still haven’t answered: what the hell am I supposed to say to that?”

“Anything,” said Mycroft.  “Nothing.  Whatever you’d like.”

“Whatever.  I’d.  Like.”  Sherlock popped all the consonants, drew his vowels out slow.  He advanced on Mycroft.  “What if I told you I wanted to hurt you?”

Mycroft stood slowly, stepping out from behind the desk.  “I’d let you.”

Sherlock clasped Mycroft’s chin, pulling his face close.  “Do you know what I did to the CIA goon who hit Mrs Hudson?  I broke his ribs, punctured his lung, fractured his skull.  Then I threw him out of window.”

_He could snap you in two, and right now, I am slightly worried that he might._

“Would you let me do that to you, Mycroft?”

“Yes.”

Sherlock grabbed Mycroft’s lapels and flung him against the file cabinet.  His shoulder blades struck it with a clanging sound that echoed around his skull when his head snapped into the metal.  Sherlock grabbed Mycroft’s throat and pinned him to the cabinet, driving his fist deep into Mycroft’s solar plexus.  The cabinet doors clanked and rattled as his body slammed into them again and again.  Mycroft let himself absorb the blows, not even bothering to clench his abdominal muscles.  Sherlock kept the pressure on his windpipe.  His vision began to blur around the edges.

The stranglehold abruptly relented.  Mycroft gulped in air, waited for Sherlock to hit him again.  But his brother staggered backwards into the drinks trolley, knocking his decanter onto the concrete floor.  The clatter of shattering crystal and the stench of spilled whisky filled the air.  Sherlock slumped back into the leather recliner against the far wall, letting his head fall into his hands.  “I’m sorry,” he said from behind his fingers.  “It’s just--you seem to be begging me to … and I don’t--I can’t--” His voice broke.

Mycroft swallowed the ball of tar in his throat and leaned back against the cabinet, trying to catch his breath.  Sherlock sobbed quietly into his coat cuffs.  He resisted the urge to cross the room and put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.  He harbored no illusion his touch would be welcome.

Sherlock wiped his face with his sleeve.  “Oh god, look at us.  We’re all a bunch of sociopaths.  First Sherrinford, then me, now you, all ruined.  Mummy will be inconsolable.”

He’d thought about how their mother might react if the film came out, before, but he couldn’t afford to, now.  Focus on the catastrophe at hand.

Mycroft took a deep breath, closing his eyes.  “You’re not a sociopath, Sherlock.”

“I murdered a man last week.  I assaulted you just now.”

“Yes, and then you stopped, because you didn’t want to hurt me.  I know Sherrinford told you that--perhaps phrased it like a compliment, even.  But it wasn’t, and you’re not.”

Sherlock glanced up.  His eyes were puffy and bloodshot.  “I note you didn’t exonerate yourself.”

“There are other words for what I am.”

“And Sherrinford?”

He opened his eyes.  “Sherrinford was a primary psychopath.  Incapable of empathy.”

Sherlock shook his head.  “What I meant was … did Sherrinford ….” he looked away, the tips of his ears becoming pink.

Mycroft’s throat was dry.  “No.  Sherrinford was ….”

He remembered his brother’s knee in the small of his back, the socks stuffed inside his mouth.

“He was abusive, but never sexually.  I sometimes wish that he had been.  It would be easier to explain, perhaps, simpler, to say that Sherrinford did things to me, and that was why I felt … what I felt for you.”

“Jesus, fuck, Mycroft.  Do you realize how--how _wrong_ that is?  Wishing you’d been molested?”

“I know.”  He loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.  He took a careful breath.  No sharp pains. He’d be purple and green tomorrow, but he doubted anything was actually fractured.

“I’m sure I never say it if I knew of whereof I speak. But it’s hard to overstate how very much I wanted--if I couldn’t make these feelings go away, I wanted at least to know why they were there.  To craft a narrative that made sense for myself.”

“Still.  Don’t say you wish you’d experienced … that.  Some things just are, Mycroft.  Nothing made us that way.”

“I do think in some ways it started with Sherrinford--though not how you suggested. I wanted to protect you from him.  And somewhere along the line that turned into wanting you to need me, and then to just … wanting.”  He wiped sweat from his forehead with his jacket sleeve.

Sherlock folded his arms over his chest and drew his legs up beneath him in the chair.  “Did Sherrinford know?”

He straightened his cuffs.  “Yes.  Though I swear that’s not why I decided to … I didn’t know he knew, until quite near the end.”

“Why, then?”

_Oh, dear me, you didn’t know, did you?  It was Sherri who set up Sherl, not me.  And here I thought that was why you killed him._

It seemed both unkind and unnecessary to tell Sherlock it had been Sherrinford who arranged the Maupertuis film.  Mycroft himself had been unaware when he’d decided to kill him.

“Syal Trevor.  I know you thought Sherrinford was helping you, but the truth is he planned for you to be caught running drugs in America.  I called in every favor I had, and had the evidence against you suppressed.  And then I spent the next two years working to bring him down.”  He sighed.  “I suppose you might say I entrapped him.  But he made his own choices. In the end, greed and ambition were his undoing.  I was carrying out a kill order, Sherlock.”

“So the story about him defecting to the Russians--”

“Is true.”

“And the drugs overdose?”

“Was staged.  As you suspected.”

Sherlock curled tighter into himself, tucking his chin into the collar of his coat.  “Traitor or no, he was our _brother_ , Mycroft.”

_I’m not given to outbursts of brotherly compassion._

Mycroft peeled himself away from the filing cabinet and crossed to his desk, taking a seat on the end.  “I don’t regret it, Sherlock.  Sherrinford betrayed _you_ , as well as the nation.”

“And it was just a happy coincidence, that by executing him you also managed to eliminate the one person who knew your secret.”

“I didn’t.  Sherrinford told--”  But if he told Sherlock about Lady Smallwood, it really would look like he’d murdered Sherrinford as part of a coverup.

Sherlock put his feet down and sat up in his chair.  “Who did he tell, Mycroft?”

“The agents who killed him.  I said he was lying to save his own skin.”

Sherlock shook his head.  “And they believed you.  Of course they believed you.  Who wants to believe these things, about anyone they trust.”

“I had to lie, Sherlock.  There was no way I could have explained.”  He sighed.  “Look at what happened to Lord Smallwood.  No one cared that all they did was exchange letters.  Even if they were explicit, there’s no proof their relationship was consummated, that they were anything more than … fantasies.  But all that Magnussen had to do was _print_ them, and say that she was fifteen--completely disregarding the fact he didn’t know that at the time--and he was ruined.”

“Yes, and if this--” Sherlock pointed at the laptop-- “comes out, _you’re_ ruined.  The only way you have any hope of surviving is if I stand with you.  If I swear you never touched me, that all of this is the product of Moriarty’s depraved mind.”  His face was white and his accusing finger trembled.  “ _That’s_ what this is really about, isn’t it?”

Mycroft goggled.  “Sherlock, I’m not asking you to do anything.  I’m not telling you this because I want you to defend me.  I’m telling you because I’m still afraid that she might use it against me, and I couldn’t bear you hearing it from anyone else.”  He looked down at his shoes.  “And also because I hurt you by concealing this secret.  I withdrew from you so you wouldn’t see me when you needed me most.”

Sherlock twisted the tails of his scarf in his hands.  “You’re not … entirely to blame for that, Mycroft.  I didn’t _want_ you to see me, after … I didn’t tell you about the Baron because I was afraid you’d tell me I was an idiot.  I _was_ an idiot.”

“You were deceived.”

Sherlock scrubbed his hand through his hair.  “I knew something wasn’t right.  I’d done--I don’t know how much of my work you’ve seen, but I’d done BDSM films before, and … any ethical director would have kicked me off set for showing up with track marks.”

“Which is why the culpability lies with them, and not you.”

His brother raised his palm in warning.  “Don’t.  I’ve heard the lecture on victim blaming.  I’m not making excuses for their conduct, but I’m not discounting my own actions.  I sometimes wonder if I wonder if I wasn’t punishing the transport.  For having betrayed me.”

“Sherlock, I don’t--”

“I was weak, Mycroft.”

“Addiction can happen to anyone--”

“It didn’t happen to you.”

He frowned.  “That’s not true.”

“There’s a difference between compulsive behavior and chemical dependence, Mycroft.”  He gestured to the sweat beading on his waxy countenance.

Mycroft nodded.  He was not looking forward to watching Sherlock go through detox.  Again.

“Anyway, I was high as a kite at the shoot.  Hardly at the peak of my powers.  It didn’t really dawn on me until they ignored my safeword that they might kill me.  I later confirmed the Baron had produced snuff films.  I’m still not sure why I survived.”

_Trust me, if I’d have known what your other brother was up to, I’d have put a stop to it._

Janine had done, he realized.  Even if she had acted for purely selfish reasons, because she’d known Mycroft would have come down on them like fire from heaven if they’d killed Sherlock.

He shuddered to think of how close he’d come to losing his brother, and to whom he was indebted for having saved Sherlock’s life.

“Once I realized I might not survive, I thought--that maybe I didn’t want to, if this was what I’d become.”

“Oh, Sherlock.”  He’d stood up to cross to his brother before he realized what he was doing, then caught himself and sat back down on the desk.  “You didn’t _become_ anything.  It was a short chapter in your life.  It doesn’t define who you are.”

“But it does, Mycroft.  It changed me, irrevocably.  You wouldn’t understand.”

He did understand.  But he’d promised himself he wouldn’t tell Sherlock anything about his interactions with Magnussen.  It seemed shamelessly manipulative.

“If you ever want to talk about it, I can try.”

Sherlock chortled.  “You can’t possibly expect me to confide in _you_ , about _this_ , after everything you’ve just said.”

Sherlock’s fist in his stomach was nothing to this.

“No.”  He looked away.  “Of course not.  I’m sorry.  I just hope you will tell … someone.”  And please, please not John, with his bourgeois morality and self-righteous rage.

Sherlock let his head fall into his hands.  “I’m sorry, Mycroft.  I know you didn’t choose to be like this.  But it’s--a lot to take in, to bear, and I don’t know what to do.  I thought I wanted to hurt you.  But then you just … let me.  And that made it worse.”

“I’m sorry, Sherlock.  I thought it might help you to--but I miscalculated, like with everything else.  Please don’t apologize to me.  You have nothing to be sorry for, ever, not where I’m concerned.  If there were anything I could do to change how I feel, to keep it from tainting everything between us, I would.  But I can’t.  And if that means you can’t trust me, that you don’t ever want to see me again, then I understand.”

Sherlock fisted his fingers in his own hair.  “No.  No, that’s not ….  I don’t want you to ….  After the wedding, you weren’t there.  I--I didn’t mean to use.  So I didn’t make a list.  And then you didn’t--Janine and Mrs. Hudson found me.  And I thought--because I hadn’t kept my end of the bargain, you hadn’t kept yours.”

“No.  God, Sherlock, no.  I was--”

“Unavoidably detained,” his brother muttered into his cuffs.

“ _Yes_.  I can’t tell you what I was doing, but I swear to you if I could have been there for you, I would have.  I got there as soon as I could, and I thought--I thought you hadn’t made a list because you--because you--”

Sherlock looked up at him.  “You thought I meant to kill myself.”

He nodded.  “So I didn’t ask for a list.  I asked if--”

_Was it accidental?_

_What else would it have been?_

“No.”  Sherlock stood and began pacing again.  “No.  I meant it when I said I wouldn’t do that to John.  And I’m sorry about what I said before, about you crafting a heroic narrative, I was--angry with you.  I didn’t mean it--either what I said or to--I made a list for you, Mycroft.  I wanted to go to a hospital instead of Serbia, I thought if I managed to convince you I would rather die than go back, you’d _do something_.”

Mycroft watched his brother attempt to wear a track into his floor.  “I wish I’d told you.  It was a mistake, to leave you in solitary.  I didn’t want to risk looking--sentimental.  The only reason Lady Smallwood approved the Serbia mission at all was because of what happened with Sherrinford.  I managed to convince MI6 I wouldn’t put family above country.  But I could have--I _should_ have arranged one meeting.  But I was afraid I’d fail, and I couldn’t--I couldn’t make a promise like that to you and not keep it.”

Sherlock came to a stop in front of him.  “You mean it.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve always meant it.”

“Yes.”

“You really were unavoidably detained.”

“Yes.”

“By Magnussen?”

His ‘yes’ caught in his throat.  He should say ‘no.’  Invent some national security emergency, let Sherlock hate him for putting his work first.

His brother clasped him by the shoulders.  “Did he hurt you, My?”  Sherlock whispered the moniker that hadn’t left his lips since he was a child.  “Did you let him?”

He couldn’t look into his brother’s eyes and lie to him.

Mycroft froze, transfixed, as Sherlock’s brows knit together.  His eyes scrutinized Mycroft’s body, as though he expected to see signs of damage.  Mycroft keenly felt every wrinkle on his suit, every drop of sweat along his hairline and collar.  After a long moment Sherlock reached out, fingers trembling, and brushed his cheek.  

Mycroft closed his eyes.  He splayed his fingers against the desk, bracing himself on the heels of his hands.  The cool fingertips of Sherlock’s other hand brushed his temple.  He forced himself to remain perfectly still.  He didn’t want to wound Sherlock by rejecting the gesture, and yet he felt he was exploiting his brother’s pity by allowing it.  

Sherlock caged Mycroft’s face in his hands and pressed their foreheads together.

Mycroft opened his eyes.

His brother’s features were a kaleidoscope of white and pink and blue and green that took over Mycroft’s field of vision.  He slowly pushed himself into a seated position, taking the weight off his hands, and tentatively set them on his brother’s shoulders.

Sherlock flinched, and Mycroft dropped his hands to his sides.  He tried to pull back, but Sherlock gripped him harder.  He went still again, fighting to keep his own breathing even, and then suddenly Sherlock’s lips were hovering over his own.  Mycroft gasped, hands clenching and unclenching, as Sherlock hesitated, taking short, ragged breaths which blew hot over Mycroft’s mouth.

He squeezed his eyes shut.  His own breathing was rapid, shallow.  Sherlock’s mouth brushed over his and then was gone, like a water strider alighting on a stream and taking flight again just as quickly.  Mycroft placed his palms on the desk again, waiting for Sherlock to release him, but his brother only shifted his hands from Mycroft’s face into his hair, fingers clutching the short strands.  Sherlock’s lips found his again, and lingered, then parted.  Mycroft opened his own mouth beneath his brother’s, craving and dreading the intrusion of Sherlock’s tongue.

It never came.  Sherlock’s fingers tugged at his hair to the point of pain as he breathed in and out of Mycroft’s mouth.  Mycroft imagined sucking his brother’s cells into his lungs.  For an eternity and an instant, Sherlock’s lips were pressed against his, and then at last his brother tugged at his bottom lip and pulled away.

Sherlock let him go and laid his head against Mycroft’s shoulder, his arms enfolding Mycroft in a vice-tight embrace.  At first, he was stiff in Sherlock’s arms, then he yielded against him, then he began to shake.  An adrenaline-induced trembling started in his limbs and sunk into his core, until his diaphragm and lungs shook with spasms, no--those were sobs.  He lifted his hands from the desk and let them rest against Sherlock’s shoulders.  This time, his brother didn’t flinch.  He wrapped his arms around Sherlock, gingerly at first, and then with increasing desperation as he realized this was probably the last time Sherlock would permit him to touch him this way.

“I love you,” he whispered, forcing the words past the tightness in his throat.

Sherlock made a choked, broken sound and twisted his fingers in Mycroft’s suit jacket, nails digging into his back.


	19. Part IV: Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a long time, but we're almost at the end now. Thank you all for sticking with me on this amazing journey! Also, please note that I added a tag. And it's rather a big one. I'm sorry. I didn't realize it needed to happen until I did.

December 27, 1:14 AM

 

Mycroft saw Anthea’s silhouette as soon as he stepped into his kitchen.  She was seated on the island counter in front of the sink.  He couldn’t see her gun, but he knew it was there by the position of her forearms.  A tide of adrenaline swept away the fatigue weighing his limbs, which tautened as he crossed the threshold.

Anthea mirrored him, sitting up straighter and lifting her weapon.  “Don’t come any closer.”

He raised his hands out to his sides.  “May I turn on the light?”

“Yes.  But slowly.”

He flicked the switch for the recessed lighting.  Anthea blinked twice, but her hands remained steady.  Mycroft drank in the changes she had undergone in the last forty-eight hours: her face was wan and there were dark rings beneath her eyes.  He could almost believe that there had actually been a sudden death in her family, which was her stated reason for taking unscheduled leave.  Except that Anthea was single and an orphan, and she knew Mycroft knew it.

“I should have had the locks changed.”  He’d been completely absorbed with damage control on the Magnussen case, and, well, changing the locks and the passcodes on his home security system was the sort of task he would previously have delegated to Anthea.

She nodded in agreement.  “You really should have.  That’s the problem with being so focussed on the big picture.  You miss the details.”

He took in the room.  Anthea had removed all the knives from his knife block (and presumably from the drawers, as well).  There were several pots and pans above the range, but Anthea was between him and them.  His only options were to talk her down, or to disarm her.

“I suppose you’re the cat who’s caught the canary.”  The corner of her lip pulled into an attempt at a smile, but her eyes remained tired, even sad.  “Magnussen is dead.  Sherlock is in solitary.  And you’re under Lady Smallwood’s protection.”

If he attempted a disarm from this distance, he would almost certainly be shot.  He needed to keep her talking, then, and surreptitiously close the distance between them.  “I was under the impression Lady Smallwood sent you here to kill me.”

“No.”  She grimaced.  “No, Lady Smallwood would never kill someone so _useful_.  She’s going to continue to cover for you, even knowing everything you’ve done.”

“Ah.”  He’d suspected the reason for her betrayal, but it was good to know what he was up against.  “She’s told you the lies fomented by my late brother.”

Anthea slowly slid from the counter, keeping her pistol trained on him all the while.  “It wasn’t what she told me, Mycroft.  It was what she asked.”

He tilted his head, waiting.

“If I’d ever seen you behave as though your feelings for Sherlock were other than brotherly.”

“And you said?”

“That you had me steal Doctor Watson’s psychiatrist’s notes.  Arrange the meeting at the warehouse so you could intimidate him.  It seemed a bit … obsessive.”

“As you are aware, my brother is an addict.  I make a habit of knowing with whom he spends his time.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Mycroft.  You weren’t concerned; you were _jealous_.”

He sucked in a breath.

Anthea shook her head.  “Don’t.  I spent years trying to convince myself you were merely protective, but the truth is, you behave more like Sherlock’s possessive lover than his brother.  After the Bond Air fiasco, you sent Ms Adler on a suicide mission to Karachi because he showed an interest in her.”

He slowly lowered his arms, relieved that Anthea did not object to his changing position.  All of the stress of the last few weeks was bunched between his shoulder blades, and holding them outstretched made his trapezius muscles burn.  “I chose Ms Adler for the Karachi mission because she was well-suited for it, not to eliminate her.  If I’d wanted her dead, she would be.”

The tightening of her jaw made it clear she’d heard his threat.  “The only reason she’s alive is because Sherlock rescued her.”

“As I had foreseen.  Please don’t do us both the disservice of pretending that I didn’t anticipate and condone Sherlock’s actions.  I was simply sparing the expense of an extraction team.”

“Which hardly made a dent in the millions of pounds wasted on the Flight of the Dead.”

He couldn’t argue with her, there.

“It was after Bond Air that Lady Smallwood started asking questions.  She asked what I thought of your relationship with Sherlock.  I told her it seemed your judgement was compromised where he was concerned.  And once I realized _why_ you were compromised, everything else made sense.  Your controlling presence in his life.  Your animosity towards John and Irene.  To say nothing of what you did to Danijel Zoric.”

He folded his arms over his chest.  “I rather thought I restrained myself with Zoric.  And I’m surprised you don’t think he got what he deserved.”

“I’m not squeamish about _what_ you did, I’m questioning _why_ you did it.  Was it because he raped your brother, or because he took something you considered yours?”

He rubbed his eyebrow.  “That you would even ask this question indicates you’ve already decided I’m a monster.”

“I’m not sure I know a word for someone who gets off on his brother being tortured.”

_Sherlock glowered at him, his face still flecked with shaving foam, then lay back down, grimacing as the movement pulled the sutures on his back._

“The barber.”

“Yes.  He told me Sherlock said you were enjoying it.”

He pressed his lips together.  “Witnessing Sherlock’s interrogation upset me more than I anticipated, and I was slower to respond than I should have been.”

She snorted.  “Try harder, Mycroft.”

He dropped one folded arm, clenching his elbow with the opposite hand.  “For someone so concerned for Sherlock’s well-being, you seem to be forgetting that Lady Smallwood would have let him die and washed her hands of him.  I risked my life and my position to save my brother.  I thought you had done the same.  Now I know you only came along to spy for her.”

“Smallwood did not support me assisting you in Serbia.  That’s what first made me suspicious of her.”

“What did you suspect?”

She grimaced.  “That she saw Sherlock as more useful dead than alive.  Or rather, that she saw _you_ as more useful with Sherlock dead than with him alive.”

He nodded.  “Sherlock’s death would eliminate a rather significant pressure point.”

“Yes.  What you’ve done to Sherlock doesn’t just make you despicable; your vulnerability to blackmail makes you a security risk.  In that regard, she’s right.  But Smallwood sees you as an asset and your brother as a liability.  And so she’d rather see him dead than see you brought to justice.”  She shook her head.  “I began to see her true agenda after Sherlock was shot.  I spoke to Janine Hawkins while waiting for you to arrive and interview her.  She mentioned Lady Smallwood had recruited Sherlock to recover the letters her husband had exchanged with his victim.”

Mycroft raised his eyebrows at the word.

She ignored him and continued.  “It seemed odd she’d approach Sherlock, of all people.  He isn’t exactly known for being diplomatic.  And when Sherlock got shot, well, I wondered.  If Lady Smallwood hadn’t arranged it.”

She hadn’t, of course.  That had been Janine, but Anthea hadn’t heard their conversation, and he wasn’t about to inform her.  He returned instead to Lord Smallwood.  “There is no evidence that Lord Smallwood’s relationship with his pen pal was ever consummated.  They met only once.”

She lifted her chin.  “He was grooming her.”

“He was unaware of her age at the time.”

Her nostrils flared.  “Of course you’d defend him.  There’s a kinship among you lot, isn’t there?”

“My lot.”  He folded his arms over his chest again.  “And who would that be, Anthea?”

“Paedophiles.”

He flinched despite himself.  He’d certainly contemplated the label in the privacy of his own mind, though to date no one, not even Magnussen, had called him that to his face.  But after what had happened the night Redbeard died--

_He felt blood drifting to his groin again, more insistent now that the heat of Sherlock’s body was pressed close.  He clenched his fingers in Sherlock’s hair, fully intending to pull him up, to roll him over, to pin Sherlock’s body to the mattress with his own, and then realized what he’d been about to do--what he was doing._

It would have been reckless not to consider whether he might be.  He’d tried on fantasies as an intellectual exercise, probed the depths of his own darkness.  There was a horrific, erotic logic to the idea of exploiting vulnerability.  He felt no generalized attraction to prepubescent bodies, but there was no doubt in his mind that the intensity of his desire that night had been amplified rather than damped by Sherlock’s youth.  He hadn’t ceased to desire Sherlock now that he was an adult.  He hadn’t forgotten the heady rush of closing his arms around his brother’s small, trembling body, either.

He let out a breath, surprised at the shakiness of it.  “And you believe that men like Lord Smallwood ought to die; you place an erotic letter writer in the same category as violent rapists like Danijel Zoric?  Don’t you think you’re painting with too broad a brush?”

“You think you need to be violent to do damage?”  There were spots of color in her cheeks, and her eyes were bright.

“I think,” Mycroft rocked back on his heels, “that thoughts, such as those Lord Smallwood wrote in those letters--” (such as those he’d had rutting into the sheets still warm from Sherlock’s body) “--are not the same thing as actions.”

“You still maintain you never touched Sherlock.”

“I don’t ‘maintain’ anything.  It’s the truth.”

She looked him up and down with narrowed eyes.  “I don’t believe you.  Neither does Lady Smallwood.  She may continue to support you publically, just as she publically supported her husband.  But she didn’t cave to Magnussen to protect him, and I don’t think she mourned his suicide.  Do you think Sherlock will mourn your death, Mycroft?”

He spun Sherrinford’s ring with his thumb.  He certainly hoped Sherlock still felt some measure of affection for him; he also knew his brother resented his interference and might be relieved to be free of it.  “I don’t know.”

“Did you grieve Sherrinford’s death?  Would you have grieved Sherlock’s, if the snipers had shot him after he murdered Magnussen?”

“Yes, about that.”  Despite the presence of Anthea’s gun, suppressed rage roughened his voice.  “You were supposed to ensure that Mary Watson replaced the bullets in Dr Watson’s gun with blanks.  You’ve made your reasons for betraying _me_ entirely clear, but I cannot fathom why you would sabotage my brother, since you claim to be trying to protect him.”

Her brow creased.  “I didn’t.  I instructed Mrs Watson to remove the bullets from the gun.  When Sherlock shot Magnussen, I thought that either you’d changed your mind, or else that you’d replaced the bullets yourself.”

“Why would I have wanted my brother to shoot Magnussen?”

“You had a far stronger motive to want him dead than I did.”

He scrutinized her face.  If Anthea hadn’t removed the bullets from the gun, then who had?  Had he been double-crossed by Janine, or by Mary?  Had Wiggins done it out of misguided loyalty to Sherlock?  The man had appeared to understand that Mycroft could offer him far more in terms of personal advancement than Sherlock could, but perhaps Wiggins was a better liar than Mycroft had thought.

“I didn’t need Magnussen dead,” he said at last.  “Merely discredited.”

“I’m not talking about need, Mycroft.  What did you _want_?  Don’t tell me you didn’t want revenge, after everything Magnussen did to you.”

His jaw worked for a moment before he managed to smooth his features.  He’d thought he’d been so discreet, so careful.  “Is that what this is about, Anthea?  Are you revenging yourself on me because your uncle escaped justice?”

She blanched.

Good.  If he had any chance of getting her gun out of her hand, he had to get her brain off the trigger.

“Maybe you believed that because you never reported the abuse, it’s not part of the official record,” said Mycroft.  “But your therapist’s notes from university are in your file.  In retrospect, I should have anticipated that someone might use it to turn you against me, but then I never thought that you would fall for such transparent manipulation.”

Her face hardened.  “This isn’t about me, Mycroft.  It’s about justice for your brother-- _brothers_.”

“You may think this is your idea, Anthea, but it’s hers.  She may not be able to sanction my assassination, but it’s what she wants.”

Mycroft wasn’t entirely sure that what he was saying was true; Anthea certainly had more access to him than almost anyone, but if Smallwood really wanted him dead, she had a number of far more experienced killers in her employ.  Still, he could see Anthea’s resolve wavering, and he pressed his advantage.

“Do you really think, if Lady Smallwood believed I’m the monster she’s made me out to be, that she’d do nothing?  She’s feigning indifference to stoke your outrage, hoping you’ll be tempted into vigilantism.  But I never touched Sherlock, Anthea, and if you kill me, then you will have let her trick you into murdering an innocent man.”

Anthea rolled her shoulders back.  “I know you’re not innocent, Mycroft.  But I don’t think you’re a monster, either, or at least, not entirely.  You’re sick, and that has made you do monstrous things.  But I think you love Sherlock, in a twisted way, and I think the better part of you knows that what you did--what you’re doing--to him is wrong.  I think that’s why you let Magnussen hurt you.  I think you thought of it as some kind of … penance.”

“You pretend I _let_ Magnussen violate me?”  He heard the indignation in his own voice and made no attempt to stifle it, allowed it to become high-pitched and shaky.  “Is that what you’ve told yourself, that I _wanted_ it?”

Her ears turned pink.  “That’s not what I ….  I know he coerced you.  I understand that you are also a victim, and I don’t think that anyone deserves to be raped, not even child molesters.”  She took a deep breath.  “I promise you I felt no joy knowing what was happening to you then, and I will take no joy in killing you now.  But someone has to.  Lady Smallwood insists you’re not a paedophile, that what you did to Sherlock was the result of a warped family dynamic and that you don’t pose a threat to anyone else.  I don’t believe that.  I think incest is a crime of opportunity and power, and you have too much of both for my comfort.  If Lady Smallwood continues to protect you, who is to say you won’t hurt someone else?  Especially if she succeeds in eliminating Sherlock.  She thinks killing him would neutralize the leverage against you and make you a more valuable asset.  I think it would simply force you to seek a new victim.”

“So you do think I’m a monster, after all.”

“I think your kind can’t be rehabilitated.  You may love your brother, but you will never not be a threat to him.  If he’s gone, you will find another outlet for your perversions.”

He drew himself up to his full height and peered down at her, took a single step forward.  “You realize that this will be the end for you.  Your career, your freedom.  Even if you manage to convince people that these lies about me are true, there will be consequences for your actions.”

“I have no intention of shooting you in your kitchen, Mycroft.”

He licked his lips.  “You intend to make this look like a suicide.”

“I think Sherrinford would see poetic justice in that.  But no.”  She transferred the gun to her right hand and reached into her handbag with her left, removing a small bottle which she threw to him.

He took another step forward, caught it one-handed, and turned it over in his palm.  Over-the-counter saline nasal spray.  “Poison?” he asked.

“ _Naegleria fowleri_.”

He rubbed the back of his neck.  “Colloquially known as ‘brain-eating amoebas.’”

“And usually confined to warm freshwater, so not something anyone would expect to find in England.  The infection is nearly impossible to detect and even more difficult to treat.  Almost invariably fatal.  They’ll misdiagnose it as meningitis, most likely.”

His thermostat kicked on.  Somehow the rush of warm air at his feet made him shiver. “It also has an incubation time of close to two weeks.”   He stared at her.  “You really think I’d need more than twenty-four hours to destroy you?”

She shrugged.  “No.  But if you dose yourself, I will resume my duties as your PA until you begin showing symptoms, and you can use the time you have left to fill me in on everything I need to know to make sure Sherlock survives his trip to Eastern Europe.

“That’s your plan, isn’t it?  Convince Lady Smallwood to offer him a pardon if he takes that undercover job in MI6, make Janine Hawkins his handler, use her knowledge to make sure he gets out alive, though maybe not unscathed.”  She tilted her head to the side.  “That’s how it is with you, isn’t it?  You enable your brother to get himself into horrible situations and then you fix things for him.  You encourage his dependence on you because he won’t stay out of love.  So you settle for gratitude.”

“You may be correct in your assessment of the effect my actions have had on my brother.  But that was never my intent.”

“For what it’s worth, I believe you.  Or I believe you believe it, anyway.  That’s the problem with brilliant people.  You’re magnificent at rationalization.”  She smiled.  “Which is why, if you do as I ask, your secrets will die with you.  If, however, you refuse, or if you tell anyone what I’ve done, I will take every incriminating thing that I’ve collected on you and I will present all of it to Sherlock and your parents.”

He shook his head.  “I would never have expected you to stoop to blackmail.”

“If you hadn’t done things of which you’re rightly ashamed, I wouldn’t be able to.”

He took a step forward.  “But I haven’t done the worst of what you’re saying, Anthea.”  Another step.  “And it’s a horrific way to die.  I’d prefer you shoot me.  Send everything to my poor parents if you must.  Sherlock will vouch for me.”

Tension ran through her whole frame.  The skin around her eyes was tight.  “Sherlock is seven years younger than you are, and you’ve manipulated him his whole life.  It doesn’t surprise me that he can’t admit you abused him, even to himself.

“But if you care for him, even the tiniest bit, you will spare him the pain and confusion of having to defend you.  Because the day will come, perhaps only after years free of your influence, when Sherlock will realize what you did to him, and this will only amplify his sense of betrayal when he does.  Do one unselfish thing in your life, Mycroft.  End it.”

He coiled his fist around the bottle of nasal spray.  “No.”

She cocked the hammer of the gun.

Mycroft flung the bottle into her face and lunged forward as he did so, both hands outstretched for the gun.  He slapped the barrel away from his face with his left hand as it went off, grabbing Anthea’s wrist with his right and shoving the slide with his left until her trigger finger snapped and the gun tore free from her hand.

Even with a silencer, the blast and the shock wave left him unable to hear anything but a high-pitched hum in his left ear.  He flipped the weapon in his hand until his fingers were closed around the grip, stepping backwards and steadying it with his other hand.  He pulled the trigger, firing a single round into Anthea’s chest.  The ivory silk of her blouse above her suit turned crimson.

Anthea staggered back against the counter, grasping at the granite with one hand and reaching for her handbag with the other.  Her knees buckled, but she got her wrist through one of the straps and pulled it with her as she crumpled against the cabinets, smearing blood down the length of the wood.

Mycroft shifted one foot backward and turned his body to make himself a smaller target, preparing for her to reach for a weapon, but she fumbled instead for her Blackberry.  He took several cautious steps forward, still covering her, then reached out with his toe and knocked the device from her hand, where it fell, harmless, into her handbag.  She spat at him.  Frothy blood flecked her lips.  

He took his own phone from his pocket and dialed 999.

“Ambulance, what’s your emergency?”

Everything he said from this moment would be on the record.  “I’d like to report a shooting,” he said, and gave his address.

“Are you in danger?”

“No.  My assistant made an attempt on my life, but I successfully disarmed her and shot her in self-defense.  The ambulance is for her.”

“Okay.  Is she conscious?  Is she breathing?”

Anthea clutched her hands to her chest, blood bubbling between her fingers.  She made a whooping noise as she struggled for breath.

“Yes.  But I believe she has an open pneumothorax.  Please hurry.”

“Help is on its way.  This conversation is not delaying the ambulance.”

“I understand.”  He glanced at Anthea.  She was panting shallowly, eyes squeezed shut.  “I would like to do whatever I can to help until the ambulance arrives,” he said.

Anthea opened her eyes, which didn’t quite focus, but her brow furrowed.

“That’s great,” intoned the operator.  “I will tell you what to do and stay with you until the paramedics are there.  You said you think it’s an open pneumothorax. Do you have medical training?”

“Some basic first-aid.  She was shot in the chest, and the wound is bubbling.”

“Okay, we’re going to need to seal the wound.  Do you have anything airtight?  Plastic bag, duct tape?”

Mycroft switched his phone to speaker mode and set it on the counter above Anthea’s head with the gun.  He knelt beside her and opened the cabinet, hoping she hadn’t removed the first aid kit.  It was still there.

“I have a first aid kit with an Asherman seal,” he told the operator as he popped it open and removed the trauma shears.  A rather unusual bit of kit to be found amongst civilian household first-aid supplies, but if the operator was surprised, she didn’t comment.  “I’m cutting off her jacket and shirt, now.”

“Wonderful.  I need you to wipe the wound clean so you can get the adhesive to stick.”

Mycroft pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves and opened the packet containing the pressure seal.  He wiped her chest clear with the included gauze packet and removed the backing from the seal, pressing it over the bubbling entrance wound.  The sucking sounds stopped.

Anthea rolled her head towards him.  Her eyelids fluttered and then fell closed.

“The wound is sealed.  Also, she’s lost consciousness.”

“Okay the most important thing now is to perform CPR.  You can just do the compressions if you aren’t comfortable with the breaths.”

“I have a mouth-to-mouth mask and have been trained to use it.”

“Great!  Remember, thirty compressions for every two breaths.  I’ll count for you.”

Mycroft removed the mask from its hard plastic case, popped it open, and wiped blood from Anthea’s mouth and chin.  Her eyelids fluttered but remained shut.  He pressed the mask down over the bridge of her nose, sliding the elastic behind her head.

_Jim gasped, sucking in great gulps of pure oxygen.  Mycroft held the mask over his face until his flailing subsided, then hooked the straps behind his head and returned to the trolley for a stethoscope._

“Okay, make sure you have a good seal,” said the operator.

He lifted her chin into the mask.  Her pulse beneath his fingers was faint and irregular.  “I do.”

“Now two breaths.  Watch for chest rise.”

For a moment, he thought of plugging the valve with his thumb, of suffocating her beneath the mask.

_You rather showed your hand there, brother mine._

“What do you see?” asked the operator.

“Almost no rise.”

“Okay, focus on the compressions.  That’s the most important thing.”

Mycroft pressed his hands against Anthea’s chest.  Her warm blood stained his fingers and soaked his shirt cuffs.  He knew the rhythm.

_Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive._

He kept his hands still.

“Twenty-seven,” the operator droned, “twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.”

He should at least make it look like he had tried.  He thrust both hands into a palm strike, and felt her sternum crack beneath the heel of his hand.

_Oh come on, Ice Man.  Ice Queen, more like.  You’re such a prude.  We’ve established that you’ve never touched Sherlock.  I’d say I admire your restraint, but I don’t, really._

“Two more breaths.”

His wool suit wicked up blood as he knelt on the floor.  The dark stains were already beginning to congeal and cool.  Jim’s mocking voice continued to lilt in his ears.

_After, Prince Mycroft tried to bury Sherrinford’s body beneath the drifts, but the blood kept soaking through, staining the cairn he raised over the body.  In the end, he left the mound of red and fled._

The wail of an approaching siren pierced his reverie.

“They’re very close, now,” said the operator.  “The ambulance is right around the corner.”

Gravel crunched beneath tires in his drive, then came to a stop.

“I can hear them.”

“That’s good.  Is the door open?”

“No.  Give me a moment and I’ll do it remotely.”  He peeled off one of his blood-stained gloves, turning it inside out, and picked up his phone, logged into his security system and disabled the alarm, opened the front door.  He also plucked the bottle of nasal spray from the floor and tucked it into his pocket.

“They should be able to enter now.”

Rapid footsteps thundered through his front hall.  Mycroft laid his hands over Anthea’s chest and began compressions.  Nothing he did would make a difference now.  Even if the paramedics managed to restart her heart, her brain had been too long without oxygen.

_‘Ice Man.  One of us, at least, lives up to Moriarty’s moniker.’  He could see the anger shimmering around Sherlock, visible in the tight line of his body and the slices of white at the pads of his fingertips curled around his glass._

Mycroft put his mouth over the one-way valve and breathed twice into the mask as the paramedics burst into his kitchen.

He stared at the image of his brother floating before his eyes, righteous indignation tinting his cheeks pink, hardening the lines of his jaw and chin.

_‘I’m so sorry, Sherlock.  I never meant for this to happen.’_

_His brother had already turned his back, dismissing him.  And that was the one response he knew without a doubt he could not bear: Sherlock shutting him out forever._

He sat back on his heels as the paramedics came in, allowed himself to be pulled to his feet and moved aside as they lifted Anthea onto a stretcher.  His legs buckled beneath him, and someone transferred him to one of the chairs from his breakfast bar.  A blanket appeared around his shoulders.  He found his fingers tangled in the cheap, synthetic fleece as the paramedics carried Anthea out of the kitchen.

He had been a coward, and it had cost him more than he had ever imagined.  It was time, now, for the nuclear option he’d first begun to seriously consider when John had brought Sherlock home from the drugs den: confess everything to his brother and throw himself at his mercy.  Magnussen was dead and Janine had neutralized his kill switch, but if Anthea was to be believed, he’d merely traded one blackmailer for another in the form of Lady Smallwood.  He had nothing left to lose now but whatever remained of Sherlock’s love, and (if he were honest with himself) it was now apparent that if he continued to hide this from Sherlock, he was destined to lose that anyway.

_Do you think your brother will mourn your death, Mycroft?_

He still had no answer to that question.  That was intolerable.  That was unacceptable.  It would be better to know that Sherlock despised him than to wonder what Sherlock thought of him and whether his feelings would change if he knew the truth.

_Sherlock will vouch for me._

He prayed to a God he didn’t believe in that his words were true.


	20. Part IV: Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a long time since I last updated and I am sorry. I wrote the ending of this fic early on, and then realized I wrote the _wrong_ ending, and it took me a bit to make it right. Also, the last chapter got so long that I've cut it in half. It is finished, however, and I will post the end soon. I just want to make some minor clean ups to the existing chapters so that anyone who has been waiting to read this fic until it's complete (or who wants to re-read since so much time has elapsed since the beginning) gets a nice, clean story.
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> I'm sorry not sorry about the cliffhanger. If you can't be left twisting, check back next week.
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> Thanks everyone for sticking with me (almost two years! I can't believe it). This has been an amazing journey, and I am grateful to every single one of you.

 

December 27, 3:17 PM

 

“Mr Holmes,” Sir Edwin took a step backwards as Mycroft entered the conference room.  “We weren’t expecting you.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow.

“Which is not to say your presence isn’t welcome.  Just … you’ve had an ordeal.”

“Hardly.”  He shot a glance at Lady Smallwood, who sat at the head of the table, facing several of the members of the Intelligence and Security Committee.  “Last night was unfortunate, certainly.  But I am unharmed.”  Stress knotted his shoulders and fatigue weighed down his bones, but he bore no lasting ill-effects from his altercation with Anthea.

“That is good to hear.”  Sir Edwin shifted his weight.  “If I may ask ….”

“It appears that my assistant was one of Mr Magnussen’s unfortunate blackmail victims.  He was able to coerce her into tampering with the antidote we created to counter Mr Wiggins’ drug cocktail, thereby sabotaging the operation I devised to bring Magnussen to heel.”

“I see,” said Sir Edwin.

“I assume she realized after the Magnussen situation … deteriorated, that things would go badly for her, and she became quite irrational.  I wish I’d had time to reason with her, but unfortunately she didn’t allow me the opportunity.  You can read the full details in the brief I’ve submitted.”

“Already?”

“Time waits for no man, Sir Edwin.”

“Nor woman, either,” interjected Lady Smallwood.  “If you please, gentlemen, I’d like to return to the matter at hand.  Specifically, to the _deterioration_ of the Magnussen situation.”

“It would be simplest to let justice take its course,” said Sir Edwin.

“And let the barristers uncover God knows what secrets Magnussen was hoarding?” Mycroft scoffed.  “If there’s a trial, they will raise the subject of motive.”

“To sell state secrets, of course, that was perfectly clear,” said Sir Edwin.

“Good luck convincing a jury that a man who has refused payment for services on multiple occasions is suddenly motivated by money.”

“Well, perhaps he had anti-government political leanings.”

“He doesn’t even know who the prime minister is.”

Sir Edwin made to speak again but Lady Smallwood cut him off.  “I sometimes wish I could forget the man myself.”  She smiled tightly at Sir Edwin before shifting her gaze to Mycroft.  “What’s your alternative?”

“I think we can all agree it’s necessary to ensure that Magnussen’s secrets are buried along with him.  Since all the witnesses to the crime are ours, we still have the ability to contain the situation if proper steps are taken immediately.  Perhaps no one knows who assassinated Magnussen, or what became of the assassin afterwards.  The man had many political enemies.”

Lady Smallwood’s eyes narrowed.  “You must realize that we cannot simply ignore Sherlock’s crime.”

“I wouldn’t dream of suggesting it.”

“Then what are you suggesting?”

Mycroft crossed to the window and stood beside Sir Edwin, pretending to look at the garden below while watching Lady Smallwood’s reflection in the glass.  The cold seeped in even through the bulletproof double panes. “As my colleague is fond of remarking, this country sometimes needs a blunt instrument.  Equally, it sometimes needs a dagger: a scalpel wielded with precision and without remorse.”  He turned towards Smallwood.  “There will always come a time when we need Sherlock Holmes.”

“If this is some expression of familial sentiment--” began Sir Edwin.

Mycroft cut him off with a sigh and a roll of his eyes.  “Don’t be absurd.  I am not given to outbursts of brotherly compassion.”  He played his trump card:  “You know what happened to the other one.”

Sir Edwin grimaced and looked away.  A flicker of a smile pulled the corners of Lady Smallwood’s mouth.  She quashed it immediately.  Mycroft doubted anyone else had noticed.

“In any event,” he continued, “there is no prison in which we could incarcerate Sherlock without causing a riot on a daily basis.  The alternative, however …” he glanced towards Lady Smallwood-- “would require your approval.”

She looked up from the open file on the Serbian situation.  “Hardly merciful, Mr Holmes.”

“Regrettably, Lady Smallwood, my brother is a murderer.”

She nodded once, then signed his brother’s death warrant with a fluid, elegant hand.  The room was silent except for the scritches of her fountain pen on the paper.  When she finished, there was no noise at all.  The silence bloomed, thickening the air in the room and making the committee members increasingly uncomfortable.

At last Mycroft spoke.  “Murderer or not, he is still my brother.  You will understand my desire to see that his life is … well spent.”

Sir Edwin pursed his mouth into a moue of disapproval.

“It is highly unorthodox to give MI5 control of an MI6 operation,” said Lady Smallwood. “However, given the delicacy of the situation, I’m sure Sir Edwin would be grateful for the advice of someone with such intimate knowledge of the asset.”

Such a loaded word.  Intimate.  Mycroft’s smile covered clenched teeth. “I appreciate the consideration.”

She nodded, but had the good grace not to smile.

 

Even though he’d made a show of arguing to be included, Mycroft only half-listened to the remainder of the meeting, remaining at the window with his hands clasped behind his back.  His heels ached from standing, but he refused to take a seat at Smallwood’s table.  The committee debated which of the varying factions that had been vying to fill the power vacuum left by Maupertuis was most likely to bring about stability, whether they could credibly distance themselves from Sherlock if his affiliation with MI6 were discovered, how the Russians might react if they became aware that a NATO country was interfering in the region, and the possible effects on the local and global economies if they responded by restricting gas exports to Britain.  All of this would be moot, shortly, if Janine held to her end of the bargain.

At last, they took their leave, except for Sir Edwin, who clearly wanted a moment alone with Lady Smallwood. Mycroft maintained his place at the window.  The tension between the three of them was palpable.

“Apologies, gentlemen, but I have another meeting on the hour,” said Lady Smallwood.  She stood up and gathered her briefcase.  “Walk with me, Mycroft?”

He fell in beside her and ignored Sir Edwin, determined not to gloat, shortening his stride to match hers as they traversed the path to her office.

She unlocked her door and crossed the room to her desk, setting her handbag atop the burnished mahogany.  Mycroft kept a respectful distance, but still found himself surveying all he could of the tote’s interior. A neat row of little pockets lining the inside held travel-size cosmetics.  By the color and shape of the tops of the containers, he identified a tube of hand cream, a bottle of _Claire de la Lune_ , and a saline nasal spray.  His pulse quickened.  The bottle was identical to the one filled with _Naegleria fowleri_ stashed in his jacket pocket.  Morbid curiosity had prevented him from simply tossing it in one of the biohazard containers at the hospital last night.  He’d wanted to examine it at a laboratory, but had had no opportunity to do so discreetly.  And so he’d secreted it on his person.

“Would you care to sit down?” asked Lady Smallwood.

He tore his eyes away from her handbag and forced a smile.  “Thank you, I’d prefer to stand.  You mentioned you had another meeting.”

She smoothed her skirt and took a seat at her desk, folding one arm in front of her body to create a barrier between them.  “I don’t need to leave for another ten minutes.  Please--” she glanced at the chair across from her-- “take a seat.”

Mycroft sat at the edge of his chair, back straight, hands in his lap, annoyed by the lack of armrests, whose absence of course was an intentional reminder of his subordinate position to the woman in the opposing chair.  The whole of her office was designed to make the person in his seat off balance, from the door at his back to the temperature of the room, which was several degrees too warm for a man in a three-piece suit, but which he imagined was comfortable for a woman in a skirt and tights.

“I know that you’re angry with me,” she began.  “Understandably so.  And while I’m sure my thoughts on the matter mean little to you, I do regret that it became necessary to take actions which I know have had painful consequences for you.”

“Are you referring to ordering my brother on a suicide mission, or to manipulating my assistant into attempting to murder me?”

Her jaw tightened.  She took an audible breath and then visibly relaxed it.  “Your brother took it upon himself to execute Magnussen, and before that, to take down Maupertuis without authorization.  It was _you_ who asked _me_ to sign off on the Serbia mission to keep him out of prison.  And your accusations regarding Anthea are absurd.  I’m sure that if you held your emotions in check and thought through it logically, you would realize that if I wanted to assassinate you, there are a number of individuals in my employ who would be better suited to the task.”

“The key word here was ‘attempt.’  Perhaps when Anthea first approached you with her concerns about me, you were elated at your good fortune.  I imagine it was convenient, having someone so close to me be willing to serve as your eyes and ears.  But once she realized that you had no intention of removing me from my position, still less of trying me for the crimes she imagined I committed against my brother, her passionate and somewhat irrational feelings on the subject made it impossible for you to predict and control her.  At that point, she ceased to be an asset and became a liability you wanted off your books.  And you knew I would likely write her off for you, if you manipulated her into attempting to kill me.”

“Again, if I had wanted your assistant dead--”

“There were ways of accomplishing it which would have been more certain.  But _this_ method allowed you to demonstrate that you could force my hand.  I assure you, you have sufficiently proved your point.”

“Is that what you’ve told yourself, Mycroft?”  She turned her chair at an angle and tilted her head.  “That I forced you to kill Anthea?  Like I forced you to kill ‘the other one.’”

“I accepted that mission willingly.”

She lifted her chin.  “I think you angled for it.”

He looked down his nose at her.  “And yet, you selected me for it anyway.”

“I did.”  She leaned back in her chair.  “The people who excel in our line of work tend to come from troubled backgrounds.  As extraordinary as you and your brothers are in other respects, in this, you are no exception.  I selected you to target Sherrinford because I knew whatever childhood enmity you felt for him would motivate you to complete the mission.  I likewise knew that your need to conceal … whatever it was that happened between you and Sherlock would motivate you to dispatch Anthea.”

“So long as my objectives aligned with yours, you didn’t care if the motivations differed.”

“I would say, rather: as long as your familial baggage spurred you to perform better, I was willing to channel it.  The moment it impeded your ability to do your job, I took steps to eliminate the source of your ongoing distraction.”  She leaned forward.  “I’ve given you an unprecedented second chance, because as a strategist, you are unequalled.  Do not disappoint me now by making a _tactical_ error.”

Mycroft glanced at his folded hands.  “If you hold my abilities in such esteem,” he said at last, “I wonder that you didn’t trust that I had a strategy for dealing with Magnussen.  Had you let me execute it, it would have allowed you to resume your inquest into Magnussen’s misdeeds with assured success.”

She crossed her arms.  “I did trust you.  I was aware of Sherrinford’s allegations.  I made it clear I wouldn’t allow them to impede your career.  I thought we had an understanding.  But you didn’t reciprocate and trust me in turn.  All of this might have gone differently if you had taken me into your confidence as soon as Magnussen attempted to blackmail you.”

Perhaps he _had_ miscalculated.  “I was under the impression you agreed to leave Sherrinford’s accusations off the record because I had reassured you of their falsehood.  I was afraid you would withdraw your support if the materials Magnussen had in his position convinced you otherwise.”

She laughed.  “Oh, Mycroft.  Honestly, I’m insulted you think me that naive.  Yes, of course, I was disappointed to discover your brother’s claims were true.  As I was disappointed when I discovered that Lord Smallwood had in fact exchanged more than letters with the young Miss Lucy Ferrier.  An indiscretion I might have attributed to an error in judgment and overlooked--had _he_ not continued to look, and always at women--at _girls_ ,” she amended, “more or less her age.”

Mycroft raised his eyebrows despite himself.  “I assumed that the allegations were slander fabricated by Magnussen.”

Her lip twitched.  “Magnussen was able to exert power over others because he knew things.  Not because he invented them.”

He pursed his lips, processing this new information.  “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged.  “I defended him publicly, of course.  But I didn’t yield to Magnussen.  I do not regret the consequences of my actions.”

By which she must mean Lord Smallwood’s ruin and subsequent suicide.  He’d been daft not to see Lord Smallwood’s guilt before, blinded by his empathy for another man he assumed had been likewise falsely accused.

“But we were speaking of you,” said Lady Smallwood, “not my late husband.  As I said, I was disappointed.  But not especially surprised.  And not inclined towards Anthea’s brand of moralistic hysteria, either.  You know as well as I that that pederasty is a common enough predilection among Afghan warlords.  And we looked the other way when it was necessary.”

He couldn’t deny it.  Of course the reports he’d received had repulsed him.  But he also knew if the British government refused to work with any _mujahideen_ who hadn’t done something horrifically immoral, there would be no one to work with, and that the kind of cultural changes that would need to happen to eliminate _bacha bazi_ would need to come from within, and be implemented over time.

_Self-righteous, hypocritical bastard._

Janine’s Irish brogue echoed in his head.

_He was fine watching until there was someone on screen he couldn’t objectify.  Then he was clamouring for ‘justice.’  But couldn’t take his evidence to you--or so he thought.  What would you have done if he had?  It’s not as though you’d’ve had the moral high ground._

He really didn’t.  It could be argued that driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan was a worthy goal, while lining a human trafficker’s pockets was decidedly not, but at the end of the day, both he and Andrews had knowingly taken actions which contributed to the exploitation of children--and had both drawn the line where their own siblings were concerned.

Sherlock would argue he hadn’t even done that.  True, he had orchestrated the murder of Danijel Zoric, and read the reports detailing his grisly end with grim satisfaction. But he’d suffered Maupertuis to live, albeit only until an opportunity to destroy him with impunity presented itself, and he doubted Sherlock would ever forgive him that.

“I’d have continued to overlook your iniquities had you only been _more discreet_ about them.  But you did something that Magnussen caught wind of, and that made your partiality to your brother a national security risk as well as a personal failing.  Even after that, I would have helped you if you’d disclosed that you had been compromised.  Instead, you concealed this from me, and let Magnussen influence you.”

He bit the inside of his cheek.  “Not nearly so much as you seem to think.  The only political favor I did for him was to procure back-door funding for his emergency broadcast network after the anti-terrorism bill failed.  A bill both you and I wanted to pass, in part for that reason, if I recall.  Had he asked me to take any action detrimental to the national interest, I assure you I would not have complied.”

Smallwood raised her eyebrows.  “You’ll forgive me for not believing you.”

“I have always told you the truth, Lady Smallwood.”

“You’ve also told rather significant lies of omission, Mycroft.”

He leaned back as far as the chair’s small seat would allow.  “Information is power in our line of work.  Surely you understand why I needed to be careful about with whom I spoke of Magnussen, and in what context and at what time.”

She unfolded her arms, laying them on the desk, palms down.  She still wore her wedding ring.  “And surely you understand that you cannot keep something like this from me again.  Ever.”

He met her gaze.  “I promise.  I will keep no further secrets from you.”

She scrutinized his face.  “I hope you are sincere, Mycroft.  I meant what I said about how much I value your judgment, on all matters save this one.  We are more alike than different, and better off working with, rather than against, one another.”

“I agree.”  He opened his jacket and withdrew the packet of Lord Smallwood’s letters.  The yellowed pages were well-creased, and tied with a frayed red ribbon.  “I thought you might like to have these.  We found them in the safe at Appledore.  There was little else, unfortunately, apart from a quantity of cash in both pounds and euros, and Mr Magnussen’s passport.”

She took them in hand, avoiding his fingers.  “Thank you.  They’re of little use to me now, but I appreciate the gesture.”  She stood up and walked to the far wall behind him, and removed a portrait of Lord Smallwood, revealing a combination safe beneath.

Mycroft lacked his brother’s knack for safecracking, but it had been he who had taught Sherlock how to use lockpicks--and sleight of hand--when they were children.  He removed his pocket square and used it to clean the bottle of nasal spray in his jacket pocket of fingerprints, then lifted the identical bottle from Lady Smallwood’s tote bag and replace it with the one filled with _Naegleria fowleri_.

_Don’t-chain-me-again-I-can-stand-I won’t sleep-I-promise._

Sherlock had sobbed against Zoric’s thigh so he could pluck the key to his shackles from the goon’s back pocket.  Would his brother be as proud of him now as Mycroft had been of Sherlock, in that moment?

_Sherlock shouted at John, presumably admonishing him to stay back, and then sank to his knees, folding his hands behind his head.  The downdraft from the helicopter blew his curls back from his face.  He kept his chin high._

No, Sherlock would look on him in horror.  “Oh, Mycroft.  What have you done?”

 

* * *

 

December 26, 9:26 PM

 

“I thought I made myself clear, Ice Man.”  Janine drummed her manicured fingernails against the fold down armrest of Mycroft’s town car.  The yellow glow of the sodium lamps lining the M1 flickered rhythmically across her face as they drove.  “I’m looking for a low-key reentry into the consulting business.  Your revised proposal is rather … flashy.”

“That is rather the point.”

She raised an eyebrow.  “I don’t think you actually need me.  I did my part--disabling the dead man’s switch.  The rest is just … theater.  And honestly, you’re even more dramatic than Sherl.  You’d do a fine job of being my brother yourself.”  She tilted her head.  The dark waves of her hair gleamed amber in the light.  “The only reason I think you might want to outsource that is ‘cause you need Sherl to bring in a head you can put on a pike to satisfy your handlers.  And there’s no way I’m gonna be that for you.”

“No.  But you did imply that there was someone else you might be willing to sacrifice.”

For a moment, the car was quiet except for the purr of the engine, still except for the vibration of the pavement beneath the tyres.

Janine turned her body so that she was backlit by the streetlights, shrouding her face in shadow.  “You mean Mary.”  

He faced forward and watched her out of the corner of his eye.  “You were completely fine with her name and misdeeds coming out in an inquest, with the possibility of her being extradited to America.”

“I was.  But our original plan would have resulted in Mary’s arrest rather quickly.  This will require me to keep her close, draw it out, so that Sherlock can put on a good show.  That will put me at considerably higher risk than I’d originally planned.”

He drummed his fingers against the sleek fabric of his umbrella, resting across his knees.  “I assume that means you’ll want increased compensation for taking that risk.”

He could hear the smile in her voice even though he couldn’t see it.  “Of course.”

He pressed his lips together, wondering what she would dare to ask him for, knowing that whatever it was, he’d have to grant it.  “Try not to make too big a dent in the wealth of the nation.”

She giggled.  “Come now, Myke.  Do you really think I can be bought, like Irene Adler?  This has never been about money, though it is true that playing Jim will require something of a budget.”

“What is it about then, Ms Moriarty?”

She leaned forward, bringing her face into the light, which made her eyes gleam.  “Revenge.”

He kept his tone casual.  “And who else do you want to avenge yourself on, apart from Mary?”

She stared at him for four flickers of street light.  “This one will be harder for you.”

He gripped his umbrella.  “Try me.”

Her lips curved up into a wicked smirk.  “John Watson.”

He sucked in his breath.  “Sherlock would never forgive me.”

“I think that ship has already sailed, don’t you?”

“Is that a threat?”

She shrugged.  “I’m merely stating the truth as I see it.”

He didn’t dignify her comment with a response.

“Do you remember what you told me, Myke? ‘For someone who spent two and a half months pretending to date my brother, you don’t know him at all’?  But I do.”  She traced the seam of armrest between them with her fingertip.  “In some ways, I know him better than you.  You may tell yourself that if it weren’t for the unfortunate fact of you being blood relatives, he might have loved you the way you love him.  It isn’t true.  He’s addicted to danger, bucks authority, detests conformity.  You’ve dedicated your life to everything he despises.”  Her eyes flashed when they met his.  “He’d have found you _boring_.”

He arranged his lips into a sneer.  “Do you ever wonder who you might have been, Janine, if Jim had found _you_ boring?  If he _hadn’t_ taken an interest in you?”

Her nostrils flared.  “Don’t project your own issues onto Jim.”

“You’re the one who’s projecting.  I didn’t imply what you inferred.”  He tilted his head.  “That’s what everyone thought, though, isn’t it?  That Jim kept you around for sex.  How it must have rankled, being dismissed as his plaything.  But that lie wasn’t so far off from the truth.  You were a pet to him, Janine, an experiment.   Everything he did to you was to see how you would turn out.  And the dull, predictable answer is: just like him.”

Janine’s smile went rigid, and her eyes hardened.  “You’d do well to remember you’re asking me for a favor.”

“And you’d do well to remember you said yourself that I don’t actually need you.  I’m offering you an opportunity, Janine.  Your face--well, your brother’s face--on every television screen in the UK, courtesy of Magnussen’s emergency broadcast network.  It would be the best advertising you’ve had since Moriarty’s trial at the Old Bailey.”

“And you expect me to believe that you would just stand by and watch me rebuild our empire.”

“I’d expect you to recollect the circumstances under which we met.”

_Janine, darling.  Come in, I’ve an errand for you._

He maintained eye contact, though his throat went dry, and his face heated, as he was transported back to Magnussen’s office, nude except for his socks and pants, urine evaporating off his flushed skin.  He was grateful for the yellow of the streetlights, which would wash out any pink on his ears and cheeks.

“There is nothing I wouldn’t do to save my brother.”

He’d expected her to mock him, but her features were carefully blank.  After a few moments, she shook her head.  “That’s the other thing I learned about Sherl: there’s no saving him.  He’s got a real death wish, an absolute martyr complex.”  She leveled her gaze at him.  “Wonder where he gets it.”

“There are worse familial traits than loyalty.”

“So I’ve been told.  There’s a reason it’s a cliché though: loyal to a fault.”  She leaned forward in her seat and pulled a thick leather-bound book from her bag on the floor.  “I did promise I would give this to you.  As a goodwill gesture.”  She slid it across the seat towards him.  “It’s time to decide, Mycroft, which you’d rather have: another dead brother, or one who’s alive, and resents you.”

He brushed his fingers over the gold, embossed letters.  They were stamped into rich, pebbled black leather.  Mycroft usually enjoyed the scent of hardbound books--dust and paper, canvas and leather, but the tannin stench of this one turned his stomach.   _The Ice Queen._ Every image and word between its pages was etched into his memory, and yet it still turned his stomach to see the physical thing.  “I made that decision a long time ago.”

Janine’s lip quirked as she tried and failed to conceal her triumph.  “Yes, I think you did.  For what it’s worth, I think Sherlock is better off without John.  Originally, I thought as soon as he came back from the dead, John would seize his missed opportunity, but he didn’t.  And Sherl just shot up and lay about _pining_ , and let me tell you, it was sickening, watching him throw away his life for that closet case.  I almost understand why it drove Jim mad.  He was such a disappointment to my brother.  He is to you, too, I think.”  She cocked her head.  “You have to resent all that squandered potential.”

He smiled back, lips tight.  “There’s something you should know about me, Janine.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“Machiavelli was only half right.  You _make_ the ends justify the means.  Once you decide on a course of action, you see it through.  You accept the consequences, whatever they are.  And you do whatever you must.”

“And whomever you must.”

He grimaced.

She placed her hand on top of his.  “I’m not talking about you.  Or your brother.  I’m talking about how I worked for Magnussen for nearly a year.”

He looked at her a long moment.  “There was nothing you wouldn’t have done for Mary.”

“Nothing I _didn’t_ do.  Why’d you think I hate her so much?”

He’d attributed Janine’s murderous fury to mere jealousy.  But her resentment--and Mary’s betrayal--ran deeper than that.

Janine glanced down at their joined hands, then flicked her eyes back up to his.  “D’you ever hate Sherlock, Mycroft?”

_You’d love it, wouldn’t you?  And you’d hate yourself for loving it and hate your brother for making you hate yourself._

“No.”  He shook his head.  “Love is a much more vicious motivator.”

She giggled.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I always wondered where Sherl learned to talk such bollocks.  Now I know.”

He frowned.  He’d tried to drum the idea that sentiment only brought pain into Sherlock’s brain since he was a child.  He’d always thought his brother had never really heard him.  It somehow saddened him to know he had.

“So we have an agreement, then?”

He turned his hand palm up, offering it to her.

She shook it, a gesture rendered awkward because his hand was both atop the book and beneath hers, a bemused expression on her face.  “Does this mean I have your word, Ice Man?”

“You do.”

“And are you in the habit of keeping it, I wonder?”

He released her hand and flicked Sherrinford’s ring with his thumb, spinning it around his finger.  “Always.”


	21. Part IV: Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who has been following this fic for sooooo long. I believe it's my best to date, and I'm so glad to have had you along for the journey.

January 1, 4:12 PM

 

Mycroft lost himself in Sherlock’s fingernails digging through his jacket into his back, Sherlock’s heart pounding against his own chest, Sherlock’s tears soaking into his collar.

_He stretched his hand out and touched Sherlock’s curls, deliberately this time, amazed at how soft and fine they were, how easily they slipped between his fingers._

_“Shhh,” Mycroft whispered.  “It’s all right.”_

The realization that he’d said the words out loud pulled him back into the present.  He released Sherlock at once; his brother responded by tightening his own grip on Mycroft’s jacket. Mycroft ran his hand over his brother’s shoulders, trembling in relief to find the woolen nap of the Belstaff instead of the smooth heat of Sherlock’s naked back.

“I’m sorry, Sherlock,” he whispered.  “So sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock murmured into his hair.  “You didn’t--”

“It _isn’t_.  I hurt you, in so many ways.  I always tried to do right by you.  Will always try to do right by you.  But sometimes ….   I failed.  Sometimes there were no good choices.”

“I know.”  Sherlock stepped back and looked at him.  “I know you tried to protect me, even from yourself.  And myself.”  He brushed Mycroft’s tears away with his thumb.  “You told Mary to take the bullets out of John’s gun, didn’t you.”

“Yes.  But she didn’t.”

“She did.  Wiggins saw her.  He put them back.”

His mind tumbled over itself, uncharacteristically slow.  “I didn’t know.  I thought perhaps Anthea had told Mary there had been a change of plans.  Like she did with the helicopter.  It’s why I didn’t reach you in time.  She betrayed me.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened.  “You killed her.  Or had her killed.”

He looked down at his shoes.  “She greeted me with a gun when I returned home.”

Sherlock’s jaw tensed.  “Because of me.”

“No.”

“But she used me as justification.”

He looked up.  “Which doesn’t make you responsible for her actions.”

“Who told her?  Surely not Magnussen.  He had nothing to gain from your murder.”

Mycroft shook his head.  There were still some things it was better, safer, for Sherlock not to know.

“Mycroft, you can’t protect me forever.  In fact, you have to admit your attempts to do so actually made this situation worse.  If you had just told me what you were about, what you were planning ….”

He sighed.  “We were recording your conversation with Magnussen.”

“You meant to charge him with extortion.  I should have trusted in you.  Known you were planning something.”

“The fault was mine.  I should have confided in you.  I told myself you had a right _not_ to know.  But the truth is, I was so afraid of losing you I forgot you were not mine to try to keep.  And I bargained with things which were not mine to offer.”

Sherlock pulled back, his face suddenly wary.  “Mycroft.  What did you do.”

“What I had to.  To ensure Moriarty’s cooperation.”

Sherlock’s tone was flat.  “And what did Moriarty want?”

Even after everything else he’d confessed, he found himself unable to admit what he’d promised Janine.  “What has Moriarty ever wanted?”

“To ... burn me.”

“To burn the _heart_ out of you.”

Sherlock’s nostrils flared. “What _exactly_ did you do.”

“Nothing which cannot be undone.  I made promises.  I will break them.  And when I do ….”

“Moriarty releases everything.”

He nodded.

Sherlock’s brow furrowed.  “I’ll stand beside you.  Whatever anyone says.  I’ll tell them it’s all lies, that you’ve never hurt me, that you’ve always been a supportive, if somewhat overbearing, big brother.”

He smiled.  “You’ve no idea how much that means to me, Sherlock.  Personally, it is everything.  Professionally, it won’t matter.  I do hope you don’t murder anyone else.  I’m afraid I won’t be in any kind of position to help you if you do.”

“Mycroft--you can’t just … give up.”

“Goodness, no.  I’m not going to go down without a fight.  Which is the other reason I chose to confess this to you now.  I don’t think Moriarty anticipated that.  She believes that I would do anything to keep this secret.  Telling you will force her to play this card, of course, but it’s all she has.  She doesn't have a contingency plan, and if you are sincere in your desire to help me, it is possible that together, we can eliminate her, and get you your pardon in the process.”

Sherlock’s small smile was sad.  “You don’t ever do anything if you can’t accomplish several things at once, do you?  I don’t doubt you’re at least somewhat concerned for my wellbeing, but you’re also enlisting me as an ally in _your_ contingency plan.”

“It was hardly a _plan_ , Sherlock.  I harbored a wild hope that you might retain some measure of fraternal feeling for me.”  He paused.  “If you didn’t, I intended to appeal to your self-interest.  I will of course do my best to assist you whether you reciprocate or not, but you must realize that Moriarty may expose your secrets as well.  She has the Maupertuis film, as well as other excerpts of your filmography.”

“I know.”  Tension undercut his voice.  “I suppose I understand--at least a little bit--of what you feel.  Having something you’re ashamed of hanging over your head.  Being worried that those you … whose opinions you value, will find out.  And think less of you.  I worried that John might find out about my past, or Lestrade.  Mrs Hudson.”

John’s potential reaction was an unknown; Mycroft could only hope he didn’t withdraw from Sherlock even more than he already had.  Lestrade already knew, though he didn’t see a reason to burden Sherlock with that fact, at least not now.  He kept the focus on the benevolent Mrs Hudson.  “Your landlady has quite the colorful past herself.  I doubt very much that she would be scandalized by anything you’ve done.”

Sherlock chuckled.  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“I usually am.”

Sherlock snorted.

“Except, apparently, about Wiggins.  I was prepared to recruit him away from you, before he demonstrated he has more loyalty than sense.  More’s the pity.”

“Wiggins’ loyalty to me saved your life.”

Mycroft frowned.  “How do you mean?”

“He went through your jacket and replaced the ‘antidote’ in your pocket with a placebo.”

The muscles around his abdomen and spine tightened, sending a wave up his back and into his shoulders.  His palms were clammy.  “You believe he foiled Anthea’s first assassination attempt.”

“I do.  Since I’ve spent the last week in custody, I haven’t been able to talk to Wiggins or take the capsule to Bart’s, but I’m fairly certain that if you tested it, you’d find that it’s something lethal.  As well as she knew your habits, you would think Anthea would have managed something more discreet than a gun.  Giving you poison instead of an antidote would have been a rather neat way to kill you--Wiggins would have taken the fall likely as not.”

Anthea’s decision to employ a weapon against him that she’d clearly designed to kill Lady Smallwood suddenly made a great deal more sense.  “Yes, I believe you’re right.”  Mycroft had survived an assassination attempt before, but that had involved a letter bomb which he’d immediately recognized for what it was.  Knowing someone had inadvertently saved him while he himself had been unaware was oddly disconcerting.  Had he taken the wrong pill, he could very well have carried his secret to his grave.  And Sherlock might have uncovered it afterwards.

While he’d never _accepted_ it, Mycroft had long assumed he would outlive Sherlock, had never considered that his secrets might be used against his brother after his death.  The thought of Janine sending Sherlock _The Ice Queen_ , of Sherlock believing that Mycroft had arranged for him to be raped, of Sherlock self-medicating without making a list because Mycroft wouldn’t be there to read it ….

“I was reckless,” he whispered.  “So reckless and selfish.”

“You weren’t the only one.”

“You were reckless and _selfless_.  You did what you did for John.”

“I broke my vow.  I promised I would always be there, for the three of them, and then I made certain I wouldn’t be.  I know it isn’t what John would have wanted.  But I did what I thought was best for him, without consulting him beforehand--don’t crow, Mycroft, just because I did what you usually do doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you.”

“I’ve never expected you to.”

“That’s the difference between us, isn’t it?  I expected John to forgive me for faking my death.  To think I was clever, even.  I never thought--but you did, and I didn’t listen to you.”

Mycroft held his tongue.  He hadn’t expected Sherlock would confide in him about anything, ever again, still less about this.

“I thought he might forgive me if he thought we were about to die.  And he said he did.  But he didn’t.  And then I really did almost die, and still he didn’t.  Maybe I thought it would be better to die, than to live in a world where John Watson hated me.”  His lip twisted.  “It was a maudlin impulse.  Not a selfless decision.  Because I know that John, though he still hasn’t forgiven me and probably never will, doesn’t want me to die.  But he doesn’t want _me_ , either.  Oh, he may think he does.  Say he does.  But he doesn’t.  He wants ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ who never really existed as John saw him. Or if he did, he doesn’t now.”  He rubbed at his lips with his hand.  “I’ve no idea why I’m telling you this.  Give me a cigarette.”

Mycroft reached into his pocket and pulled out the packet.  He fingers still tingled with residual adrenaline, but he suspected Sherlock's would be shaking even worse.  He shook a cigarette out of the packet and after two tries, lit it and handed it to Sherlock.

Sherlock inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and then let the smoke out slowly.  “I suppose I thought … that if I couldn’t be Sherlock Holmes for him, that perhaps he’d be better off with Mary.”

“I doubt that.”

“You’re biased.”

“Well, she did shoot you.”

“She wasn’t actually trying to kill me, you know.”  Sherlock took another drag.

“I know.  You still could have died.”

Sherlock shot him a sidelong glance.  “You weren’t planning on killing her, were you?”

He leaned back on his hands.  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Jesus, Mycroft.  Though I suppose I can’t talk, given Magnussen.”  He glanced around the room, clearly searching for an ashtray.

Mycroft reached behind him for a bowl of paperclips, emptied it, and wordlessly handed it over.

Sherlock flicked his cigarette into it.  “You should just admit you smoke.  Get yourself an actual ashtray.”

“Making it less convenient reminds me that I aspire to quit.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“I do try, you know.”

Sherlock handed him his cigarette.  “Perhaps you should consider simply accepting your vices.”

Mycroft placed his lips where his brother’s had been and inhaled.  He held the smoke in his lungs until it burned, then blew it upward.  “Perhaps.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, this concludes the fic proper. I intend to go back at some point soon and add an appendix with the timeline, since a couple people have asked about it. So, say subscribed if you're interested in that. But this is the end of this story. I do at some point intend to write more in this series. But I'm waiting to see what S4 brings.
> 
> All of the fics in the Laws of Men and Nature series stand alone, but all of them occur in the same universe, which is mostly canon compliant with a focus on Series Three. I will link to other fics in the 'verse as this one catches up to them in the timeline, and may occasionally take time off from this fic to publish more little side stories. Fraterfamilias will take us through the end of Series 3 in the canon timeline.
> 
> The story will continue in my new fic "Aposematism and Crypsis," but from different characters' perspectives. I'd call it a Series 4 speculation fic except that I highly doubt the BBC will take the story in that direction.


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